Vayudoot's final landing

Vayudoot’s final landing

This morning the papers carried the news that Vayudoot was to be officially closed down. It is not a day too early. This was an enterprise that no one had a clear idea about its purpose and also its business plan. Generally it was used to park retired or unwanted people from Indian Airlines and Air India.

I was involved in the launch of Vayudoot in an indirect way. I used to work for Clarion-McCann Advertising which at that time was India’s second largest advertising agency. Among other clients we also handled the advertising of Indian Airlines out of our Delhi office. I was the Group Manager on that account. One Saturday morning (17 January 1981) my family and I had just locked our apartment door and were climbing down the steps for a rare outing. I saw my Regional Manager walking up the stairs.

He had just got a call from Indian Airlines informing him that a new airline called Vayudoot was being launched from Gauhati on Tuesday, January 20.Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had agreed to inaugurate the airline. A launch ad had to be prepared for release in the Eastern papers on that day. As had happened several times before, my family reluctantly traced their steps back to home.

I reached my office that Saturday by 11 am after alerting my creative team. We had the ad layout ready by 2 pm. Knowing the strange ways of public sector companies things got stuck at that stage. Rajeev Gandhi’s old school chum, Romi Chopra worked at Hindustan Thompson, India’s largest ad agency. That agency had been given the task of developing the Vayudoot logo. As luck would have it the creative team there was out on an offsite meeting. By the time we got the logo from them it was past 6 pm. This was included in the ad and I took the final artwork to the Indian Airlines Public Relations Manager at his house for final clearance. By the time I got back to me office it was 9pm.

Those days newspapers still required zinc blocks for printing ads. I took our artwork to the block maker, who had also been alerted, at around 10 pm. I received the blocks at around 4 am on Sunday. I took them directly to Palam airport to hand it over to an Indian Airlines executive who was flying to Gauhati via Calcutta for the inauguration. He was to hand over the blocks to The Statesman, Assam Tribune and other local papers.

I finally returned home after breakfast. This meant I was out of my home for around 24 hrs just for this one project. The ad appeared as scheduled on Tuesday to coincide with the inaugural flight.

My adventure with Vayudoot did not end there. By then I had moved to another company that was in to automotive and engineering products. I had to make several visits to Punjab for promoting our products for use in agricultural machinery. The most convenient means of travel was the Vayudoot flight from Delhi to Ludhiana. The flight would generally have less than 20 passengers, most of them sikh NRIs speaking with a British or Canadian accent. On one flight there was a lone passenger sitting in the last row across the aisle from me. When the steward brought the tray of sweets to him there were only two pieces left. The passenger in a disparaging tone said, “Can’t Vayudoot afford even sweets?”The steward got so annoyed that he took a fresh bag of sweets from the overhead locker and almost dumped it on the passenger.

Meanwhile, the Haryana businessmen were envious that Punjab had been given a flight. They insisted that Haryana too should have one. So, the same Vayudoot flight would make a transit halt at Hissar airport. All the technical procedures would be followed including a policeman at the bottom of the steps. In none of my trips did I ever come across a passenger getting down or boarding the flight at Hissar. On one return flight when we took off from Ludhiana the pilot announced that we were flying from Ludhiana to Delhi via Hissar. My colleague and I slept off. Suddenly we heard the pilot announce that we were about to land in Delhi. Apparently, as there were no passengers interested in Hissar the pilot had decided to overfly that town. A month later the Ludhiana businessmen gave an ultimatum to Vayudoot, “Either give us a direct flight, or we will boycott Vayudoot.” That was the end of the Hissar halt.

I don’t think anyone is going to mourn the demise of Vayudoot.It was an experiment that failed, particularly because no one really had their heart in it.