Kannur :

Kannur is all set to take wings with authorities of the Kannur International Airport burning the midnight oil to ensure that commercial operations at the airport begin by mid-2016.

However, this will not be the region’s first brush with airline operations. Not many know that the first flight to the state had landed in this cantonment town – decades before the Kannur airport was conceptualized. The DH83 Fox Moth aircraft of Tata Airlines was the maiden flight of that operator to Kerala, under the patronage of Maharaja Chithira Thirunal, the last king of Travancore.

The operator started the service to Kerala on October 29, 1935, after the frequency of the Karachi-Madras flight, was increased to twice a week in 1934, according to the website of Tata. The weekly service between Bombay and Trivandrum had stops at Goa and Cannanore. Though Kannur was not a commercial stop, the small aircraft had to land here for refuelling. It was the time of the British reign and Kannur cantonment had an airstrip as the military headquarters here used to have several airmail from Bombay.

“The first passengers were JRD Tata’s colleague Jal Naoroji and the well-known Bombay merchant Seth Kanji Dwarkadas, the latter wearing a traditional dhoti, a long black dagalo coat and a small black cap,” the website says.

Seeing the flight was nothing short of a great spectacle and children in the town went as if they were going to watch a festival, remembered Captain Krishnan Nair in his autobiography ‘Krishna Leela’.

“It was in the Fort Ground that the aircraft landed… and even now that feeling of wonder is in my heart. The ‘Pushapakavimana’ we heard of in the epics is here in the Kannur Fort Ground, we said in mind. We kids shouted and some of us wanted to touch it. But since there were security personnel there we couldn’t,” wrote Captain Krishnan Nair in his autobiography ‘Krishna Leela’.

The flight put Kannur on India’s airline map though it had no airport, according to Madhu Kayarat a former employee with Peirce & Leslie, the ticketing agent for Tata’s air service.

“And if the information I got from my seniors at Peirce & Leslie is correct, the first flight had birthday greeting for the Maharaja from Lord Willingdon, the viceroy, and a copy of The Times of India, making the most prominent daily newspaper in the country available to a Malayali reader on the day of its printing,” he said.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Kozhikode / by P. Sudhakaran, TNN / September 14th, 2015