Events & Personalities
Tata Airport?
"It would be fairly appropriate that Juhu Airport in Bombay is named as Bharat Ratna J. R. D. (JRD) Tata Airport, keeping in mind (his) notable contributions in the Indian civil aviation sector,” Poonam Mahajan, Member of Parliament from the city’s North West constituency, wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, reported the Mumbai Mirror (MM) of December 6, 2017. Herself a pilot, Mahajan, is also the chairperson of the Airport Advisory Committee. She intends to "raise the issue at a meeting of Airport Users Committee on December 13, 2017, so that the demand is documented in minutes,” noted the news report.

Juhu Airport (Photo courtesy: slideshare.net)recommended
for renaming after J. R. D. Tata (below left)
Mahajan’s letter to Modi recalled that Tata "became one of the first Indians to be granted a commercial pilot’s license in 1929...(His first) flight under the aegis of Tata Aviation Service, forerunner to Tata Airlines and Air India, carried mail in a Puss Moth aircraft to Juhu Airport in Mumbai from Drigh Road airstrip in Karachi via Ahmedabad.”
In the 1990s, there was a great demand to name Bombay’s international airport after JRD, but the Shiv Sena and Bharatiya Janata
Party government at the centre decided to name it after Shivaji, the Maratha king. Tata started the Bombay Flying Club which is the first flying club and flying school in India. Juhu Airport is currently being used by helicopters and small fixed wing aircrafts. The MM report notes that the Airport Authority of India will start a small museum at the entrance of Juhu Airport where photographs of yesteryears when JRD started the Flying Club and his planes will be displayed.
Recipient of the Daniel Guggenheim Medal in 1988 for his life time work for aeronautics, the citation for JRD’s achievements read: "For a lifetime of significant contributions to aviation, for his pioneering work in developing commercial air travel in India and Asia, and for his leadership in establishing Air India as a major international link between Asia and the rest of the world.”
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