Guzder’s Zeppelin flight

Nusserwanji Guzder was "the only person from India to fly on the Graf Zeppelin from Germany to Buenos Aires to Rio de Janerio in South America and back,” notes an entry in The Indian and Pakistan Year Book 1949. The passenger-carrying, hydrogen-filled rigid airship covered the distance of 16,000 miles in 13 days in 1934, with the first 5,000 miles completed non-stop. The Year Book records Guzder as a "partner in Nusserwanji S. Guzder & Co (NSG), Landing and Shipping Contractors.” The Graf Zeppelin flew from 1928 to 1937 and offered the first commercial transatlantic passenger flight service, according to Wikipedia.

When Parsiana contacted Guzder’s grandson, businessman and philanthropist Cyrus Guzder for memorabilia of the flight, he stated: "I clearly recall that my father (Jamshed) used to tell us about his father Nusserwanji’s journey across the Atlantic in the Graf Zeppelin.” He shared photos of the "aero adventures” of Nusserwanji in the early days of aviation and of the senior gent at work. Commenting on one of the early air journeys that Nusserwanji undertook, Cyrus pointed out: "He looks rather prosperous in the photograph which shows him standing alongside an Imperial Airways’ HP42 airplane, sometime in the 1930s... Very likely he was boarding an Imperial Airways flight in London to return home, a journey that would have been taken five to seven days, as the HP42 could not fly at night and had a cruising speed of around a 100 mph.” Imperial Airways was the forerunner of the British Overseas Airways Corporation and British Airways. "In the 1930s, the British wanted to operate long distance routes with more capable aircraft. (Aerospace manufacturer) Handley Page designed the HP42, an aircraft with many engineering innovations, to fly the routes from London to their colonies in South Asia,” noted Cyrus.
In the second photo that Cyrus shared, Nusserwanji is standing alongside a huge crate in the Bombay docks, "probably in the first decade of the 1900s when Tata Power was setting up its hydro-electric projects in the Western Ghats.” The crate contained a British-made transformer shipped from Rugby, UK (weight 20 tons), destined for one of the Tata Power generating units, he stated. "Every imported generator and transformer for the three major hydro-stations of Tata Power was handled by NSG. Most remarkable was a 60-ton generator which came from General Electric in Chicago and was transported to Khopoli on a platform on wooden rollers. Probably, much the way heavy blocks of stone were pushed/pulled to build the Pyramids in Egypt!
"NSG was, since the 1890s, the exclusive shipping and handling agent for the imports of Tata Power and Indian Hotels. The entire import of furniture, chandeliers, etc, of Taj Mahal Hotel was handled by NSG,” noted Cyrus