1933: This Indian Airline Logged More Than A Million Air Miles in Its First Four Years

December 12, 1933

Indian National Airways Ltd began operations. This airline had been established seven months earlier in Delhi, India, by British industrialist R.E. Grant Govan as part of his business Govan Bros Ltd. (At the time, the Indian subcontinent was still under British rule.)

Indian National Airways was only the second commercial airline to go into service in India. The first of these India-based enterprises, Tata Airlines (present-day Air India), had been launched by Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata in 1932. Originally called Tata Airlines, it is now known as Air India.

Indian National Airways’ earliest regularly scheduled flights included weekly passenger and freight services between Calcutta (now called Kolkata) in eastern India and Rangoon (present-day Yangon) in Burma (more widely known today as Myanmar). The airline also provided weekly passenger and freight services between Calcutta and Dacca (present-day Dhaka in the People’s Republic of Bangladesh). As a result of these airborne services and others, Indian National Airways logged more than a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) in flights by 1937.

When India achieved independence from British rule in 1947, Indian National Airways was one of the new nation’s four major airlines. Indian National Airways’ fleet at the time included six British-made Vickers Vikings planes. In addition, the airline had purchased some Douglas DC-3 planes from the United States after the end of World War II a couple of years earlier. Indian National Airways remained in existence until it was merged into Indian Airlines in 1953.

For more information on Indian National Airways Ltd, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_National_Airways_Ltd.