Flying Without Leaving the Ground

Delhi, India – December 7, 2007 – Most people dread flying aboard commercial airliners because of the all-too-common delays, especially during the holiday rush. Then there are those in India. According to The Times of London, retired Indian Airlines engineer Bahadur Chand Gupta has created a travel simulator that gives Delhi residents a chance to experience virtual journeys for $4. The simulator is made up parts — including fuselage, one wing and part of a tail — of an Airbus A300. It has no lighting and the lavatories don’t work. A generator powers the air conditioning. But on most Saturdays, about 40 people line up to experience the “flight” and to get a look at the inside of an airplane. As on an ordinary aircraft, customers buckle themselves in and watch a safety demonstration. Gupta sits at the controls in the cockpit and makes regular announcements about things like turbulence. His crew of six, which includes his wife, goes up and down the aisle serving drinks and meals. “Some of my passengers have crossed the country to get on this plane,” Gupta told the Times. That’s because 99 percent of India’s population has never traveled on a plane because they can’t afford it. “I see planes passing all day long over my roof,” Selim, a 40-year-old mechanic told the Times. “I had to try out the experience.”

Indian school students sit in the cabin of a decommissioned plane in New Delhi. Of the 55 school girls who took a 'flight', only three had flown before. Passengers are shown the emergency drill during their trip in a decommissioned plane in New Delhi. Despite a boom in air travel as the country's economy grows, experts say nearly 100 million Indians are likely to travel by plane this year. That is still a small proportion in a country of 1.1 billion people. The simulated flight includes beverage service! "Most people in India have not seen an aircraft. I have been flooded with requests," said the plane's owner Bahadur Chand Gupta, a retired aircraft engineer who floated the concept in 2004. All photos from :http://www.daylife.com/words/Gupta

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