Mumbai pilot gets his indigenous aircraft registered, names it after Modi and Devendra Fadnavis
Amol Yadav said the airplane was registered only because of the efforts of the prime minister and Maharashtra chief minister.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has registered the country’s first indigenous aircraft, manufactured by Mumbai-based pilot Amol Yadav. The registration was done on November 17.
Yadav said on Monday that he had named the six-seater aircraft after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, the Hindustan Times reported.
Yadav, who is currently a deputy chief pilot with Jet Airways, built the aircraft over six years on the terrace of a residential building in Mumbai’s Kandivali suburb.
He said that he had been pursuing the DGCA for registration to conduct trials of the aircraft since 2011, but officials were slow to act. It was only after he presented his creation at the 2015 Make in India week that his proposal was pushed.
“It was only because Fadnavis intervened and Modi gave directives to the authorities, that we got our aircraft registered,” he told the Hindustan Times. “This is the first aircraft manufactured in independent India. In gratitude, we have named the aircraft VT-NMD, where NM stands for Narendra Modi and D for Devendra.”
Yadav said Modi personally spoke to Fadnavis, who in turn wrote a letter to the DGCA seeking registration of the aircraft.
Rashmikant, Amol Yadav’s brother, said they have tied up with the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation to construct a 19-seater aircraft. “There are only four countries that manufacture 19-seater aircraft,” he said.