Today most people prefer to travel by plane. Because long distance travel by plane is completed in just a few hours. But compared to railway, air tickets are also very expensive. But we will tell you about an aviation company that at one time used to provide air travel to passengers for just 1 rupee. Yes, lakhs of passengers traveled by plane for just one rupee. Know how this aviation company was started.
Captain Gopinath
All those who have knowledge of the aviation industry will be aware of the name of Captain Gopinath. Because with his hard work, he made millions of Indians travel by air for just one rupee. Captain Gopinath’s full name is Gorur Ramaswamy Iyengar Gopinath. He was born on 13 November 1951 in Gorur, a small village in Hassan district of Karnataka.
Deccan Aviation
Captain Gopinath started helicopter service in 1997 as a private company named Deccan Aviation. His company said that show any place on the map, we will take you there. His aim was to provide chartered helicopter service for VIPs. In 2000, while Captain Gopinath was vacationing in America, he got the idea of starting a low-cost airline service in India.
Let us tell you that after a long struggle, in August 2003, Captain Gopinath established Air Deccan with a fleet of six fixed-wing turboprop airplanes with 48 seats and two engines. The company quickly gained popularity and in the year 2007, 380 flights of this company used to fly from 67 airports of the country in a day. When the company started, only 2000 people used to travel in the company’s planes every day. But by 2007, 25000 people started traveling by air every day at a cheap price. The company had made about 30 lakh people travel by air on a ticket of one rupee. For this, passengers who booked earlier used to get tickets for just 1 rupee.
How did the company close down
According to the information, time passed slowly and Air Deccan went into losses. In October 2007, Air Deccan was renamed as Simplifly Deccan. In April 2008, Captain Gopinath sold Air Deccan to liquor baron Vijay Mallya’s company Kingfisher. Vijay Mallya was also the owner of Kingfisher Airlines, so Simplifly Deccan merged with Kingfisher Airlines. Vijay Mallya renamed Air Deccan as Kingfisher Red in August 2008. However, by 2011, Vijay Mallya had shut down the company."text-align: justify;">Read also: What is the army’s NOK policy, why is there a demand to change it?