Simply Fly

by Capt G R Gopinath

  After angling, the lady would be flown to Mysore for a visit to the palace and lunch at Lalit Mahal. Thereafter she would head for the banks of the Kabini. The evening would feature a campfire and barbecue. The next morning she would take in sights of the wildlife at the sanctuary and head back to Bengaluru in the afternoon.

  We laid out the red carpet for the lady VIP. I remember the occasion. I asked Jayanth who would fly the lady, to ensure that the smallest detail was not overlooked. ‘Jayanth, you are going to charm the lady. They are saying heads will roll if we don’t keep them happy. Make sure yours does not,’ I said. Jayanth is a great pilot and wonderful raconteur. He can tell stories till morning. Many of his stories are real and the rest he makes up. He would narrate stories from army days. He combined a great sense of humour with a poker face that make his most outrageous tales ring true!

  Jayanth carried the day and no heads rolled. I asked the lady about the trip. She said, ‘Jayanth is not only a great pilot. He is a great dinner companion too.’ I knew which way to take the tourism mandate forward. This was the beginning of heli-tourism across the country. Today, in the tourist season, 30 to 40 per cent of our revenue comes from it.

  All it needed was to identify the different nodes and players, and create smooth interfaces between them. We went about it in an unhurried and systematic manner so that the network fell into place. We coordinated with the police for security; got permissions from district authorities to land, and tied up with property owners for a landing patch. Looking back, these appear so easy that one wonders why it had not been done before us!

  Heli-tourism was very niche, very upmarket. People who operated at those dizzy heights were ready to pay more. Pricing a product or service is always tricky. There was a suggestion that we price ourselves a little lower to increase volume. I had no clear-cut answers but I argued that if we priced lower than the Rs 35,000 per hour that we were charging the high-end customer, the customer who could afford to pay more would end up paying less. Also, as there was a huge hiatus between this category of customer and the next level, a discount of 20 per cent would not make it sufficiently cheap for other people not in this category to use our service. We would end up losing on both ends and realizing less revenue. For the high-end customer the pricing was ten times the price of a business class ticket. I drew an analogy with the price of a masala dosa at Oberoi’s. It was priced about Rs 200 at the time. If you wanted to increase the dosa sales in the five-star chain, you might want to give a 20 per cent discount. That would bring the price of the dosa down to Rs 160. However, a masala dosa sold at an Udupi fast-food café costs Rs 10. A five-star hotel would never be able to match that level and pegging sales increase to such pricing would be disastrous for their business.

  India had a measly two million tourists in 1995. Compared to that, Niagara Falls alone attracted twelve million tourists that year, and four million of those were foreign tourists. Singapore got six million tourists. I constantly worried about devising ways of getting more tourists to India. There was a single drone of thought, which rose above everything else. ‘How do we crack this? How do we get more tourists into the country?’ In other countries the entrepreneurs had to build tourist attractions such as a Disneyland or an Eiffel Tower, whereas our country already has the sights and we don’t have to invest in creating the primary attractions. It requires infrastructure and policies that support the activity: this can be done by a single stroke of the pen!

  One day, as I was driving to my sister’s house for dinner with my wife and daughters, I got a call. It was about 8.30 in the evening. The caller asked if I was the MD of the helicopter charter company. The caller said she was British. She said her friends and she were on a Cochin–Goa Indian Airlines flight that had been cancelled midway and she and her friends were dumped. There were no onward flights to Goa in the next couple of days. The airline officials had told them to wait for two days. They would put the passengers on the next earliest flight to Cochin and from there fly them to Goa!

  The airline’s salvage plan for the passengers appeared to me like Tughlaq’s travel plan. The caller said she seemed a little lost. She said, ‘And, so we are stuck. We were planning to come to Bengaluru later. But now that we have two days at our disposal we were thinking maybe we could go to Srirangapattanam.’

  I asked the lady what had brought her to India and what she did for a living. She replied in a matter-of-fact way, with some humour, ‘Let’s say I’m a lady of leisure. I would like to know from you whether you could arrange for a helicopter to take us to Srirangapattanam, the old capital city of Tipu Sultan more than 200 years ago.’ I asked her where she was at the moment. She said she was in the bar at the Ashoka Hotel. The Ashoka was then operated by the Indian Tourism Development Corporation.

  I always made it a point to ask a prospective customer how s/he heard about us. I had inculcated this habit in others too. Therefore, whenever they received a call from someone, they would ask how the caller had heard about us. I reckoned that was one way of understanding which channels to use to advertise the company. I wanted to know whether the prospective customer had read about us in the papers or heard about us from someone who had used our services. I asked the British lady and she replied that the barman serving beer at the counter had informed her about my company. She had asked the barman which was the quickest way to reach Srirangapattanam, and without further waste of time. The barman had advised her, ‘Madam, why not take a helicopter ride?’

  The barman illustrates a point I have often tried to make. When people call you, be good to them. People may not use your service or product, but they are calling because they nurture some form of goodwill for you. They mean well for you. They could be your sales front, unpaid and entirely voluntary, all because they are curious about you.

  I understood how the barman had got this idea. The bug of heli-tourism had hit me and I had placed placards at the travel desks of five-star hotels in town. It was my idea, exaggerated at the time perhaps, that we would go around these hotels on Saturdays and Sundays in a bus and pick up visitors eager to patronize our service. It would be easier for a group of four tourists to pay Rs 25,000 each than for one to pay one lakh rupees, I figured. Guests forced to spend the weekend in Bengaluru would find comfort and pleasure in the quick getaway package we would offer them, and the resorts would welcome this bonanza. We were offering two or three combo packages. Going to Kaveri Fishing Camp and back the same day was one; Kaveri Fishing Camp, Mysore, and back the same day was package number two; Kaveri Fishing Camp, Kabini River Resort, night stopover and wildlife safari the next day and back was the third. Common to the packages was breakfast, lunch, and evening barbecue. The stopover package included dinner at a campfire. Pick-up and drop facilities were also a common feature; we would not allow our passengers to waste a drop of un-intended perspiration.

  We added drama to the experience. We advertised in the local magazines and had write-ups published. We gave a lot of interviews. The sheer novelty of our venture had made it worthwhile for magazines to write about us. Magazines like Bangalore this Fortnight were given away with compliments at these hotels. They provided us the cheapest channel of advertising. The barman had seen these placards and magazine pullouts. The waiters at Ashoka knew about Deccan helicopters.

  We were driving close to the hotel when the lady called. I told my wife that we would have to make a detour. I had become quite truant as far as family was concerned. I was a helicopter missionary at all hours of the day and all days of the week. I lived, breathed, ate, slept, and dreamt just one thing. I was unable to keep the word I had given my wife. I confessed to her that I smelt opportunity and did not want to lose it. I called the lady at the hotel and said, ‘If you can buy me a chilled glass of beer, I will come and meet you rightaway. I’ll help you make a plan.’ She readily agreed.

  The lady waited with two other men. She gave me her card. She said she had been commissioned by Macmillan to do a book on the East India Company. She had
been in India for the last three months and was visiting all the historical places that had the faintest connection with the East India Company and British history in India. She had a writer and a photographer with her who wished to go to Srirangapattanam. I said that as they were going to Srirangapattanam anyway, they could include Kabini wildlife reserve, a ten-minute flight away, in their itinerary. She had however made up her mind. ‘Everything else is secondary. Srirangapattanam is the most important.’ ‘We will take you to Srirangapattanam,’ I assured her. ‘It will be a thirty-minute ride. We will fly you early in the morning and give you packed breakfast. You take a look around. We’ll get you a guide to show you the place. From there we’ll fly you to Mysore. How does that sound?’ I knew the topology of the land and quickly planned an itinerary that included, besides Srirangapattanam, the Mysore Palace, the tigers, elephants, and the game.

  Even as we discussed her itinerary, I called Jayanth and asked him to send an engineer to identify a place for us to land in Srirangapattanam. He would send us coordinates of the landing spot, the pilot would key them into his GPS and home in on the pad. The lady was mulling over the prospect of seeing and experiencing Oriental exotica: the palace, tigers and elephants, campfire, barbecue, dinner by the lakeside, and boat ride.

  After some serious cogitation, she asked, ‘How much are you going to charge?’ I said I would charge her Rs. 1.5 lakh. She said she could pay Rs 75,000. I suggested she skip Srirangapattanam and head straight for the wildlife sanctuary. Srirangapattanam, she insisted, was an absolute must. I yielded. I said she could do Srirangapattanam and back at one lakh rupees. That looked a bare offer and didn’t have the bait I had earlier thrown. We threw the price back and forth and negotiated. She threw me her bait. ‘I’m going to give you credits in my book. It will say, “Thanks to Deccan Aviation!” How much discount can you give me for that?’ I committed five per cent. We settled on that.

  India is the only country in the world to offer the entire spectrum of what the tourist finds irresistibly attractive. Not Africa, not Europe, not USA—but India! America has picturesque national parks but little wildlife and no heritage worth mentioning. Europe has heritage monuments but no wildlife. Sub-Saharan Africa has the big five of wildlife aplenty—hippos, giraffes, lions, rhinos and elephants—but no heritage in the form of temples, forts, or palaces of historic interest. The heritage of Africa is entirely concentrated in the awe-inspiring Egyptian pyramids. India has them all: temples, palaces, monuments, and forts; the majestic Himalayas, rivers, deserts, beaches, great forests, and the big five of wildlife: tigers, lions, elephants, rhinoceros, and leopards. Well-known travel writers Hugh and Colleen Gantzer came to interview me once. They prefaced their call by saying, ‘Captain, we don’t think anybody realizes that you have had the biggest impact on tourism in this country. We want to do a story on you.’ The husband-and-wife team travels together for the first six months and stays put in Mussoorie for the next six, writing. They had been writing about India for thirty-five years. ‘And after thirty-five years, we feel we have not even scratched the surface of India in terms of tourism,’ they said.

  The words of Hugh and Colleen echoed my continued bafflement at why, in spite of such an incredible gamut of offerings, the profile of Indian tourism remained abysmally low.

  It was 10 p.m. when I shook hands with the guests after closing the deal. I suddenly remembered that my wife and daughters had been waiting in the hotel lobby for the past hour. I apologized to them and we drove to my sister’s place. My sister offered us chilled beer, which thawed the cold strains in relations and I savoured it with the relish of a hunter who has just closed in on his quarry.

  The lady and her team took off the next day on their trip. Time moved on and I forgot about them. One day, a year later, I received a parcel from London. I opened it and found a printed invitation card, a note, and a book. The card said: ‘Macmillan invites you to the launch of their book: East India Company.’ The credits included Deccan Aviation.

  We soon began to undertake corporate and infrastructure sorties. We were hired by a British company to undertake a power line survey and by film companies for aerial filming. We were inundated with calls from the film industry in Bollywood and Sandalwood, the fledgling Kannada film industry, and occasionally also from Hollywood. We received calls from organizers who wanted flowers dropped from the air during an event. Those inaugurating a new temple wanted us to shower petals at the moment when the deity was being consecrated. We received enquiries from all manner of people. No market research analyst could have guessed that the helicopter had such diverse uses.

  A very rich Kolkata-based businessman was celebrating his daughter’s wedding in Goa. He wanted us to fly all the way from Bengaluru to Goa to drop flowers on the bride and the groom during the ceremony. The actual flower-dropping required only half an hour of local flying, but the flight from Bengaluru to Goa and back entailed several hours of flying and a huge cost. The customer was willing to pay the staggeringly huge cost of the operation. Many others, including Marwaris, Sindhis, and Rajputs, hired the helicopter in lieu of the white horse that the groom rides in the baraat to the bride’s house, so frequently witnessed on the busy roads of Delhi and Mumbai. An ancient tradition acquired new-age colours with the helicopter.

  Nikaah in the Helicopter

  One day, late in the afternoon, a visitor called on me, wishing to hire a helicopter. He insisted on meeting me. I was curious and came down to the foyer. There were three people in suits and ties sitting in the reception area. They had come to sell a product or service and I dealt with them politely, turning to the security officer and asking him about the gentleman who wanted to hire the helicopter. The security officer pointed to a corner and said, ‘Sir, it’s him standing in the corner.’

  There stood in the corner an unassuming, humble looking man simply attired in loose pyjamas and shirt with a collar and button-flap at the top. He sported a short goatee and appeared to be in his thirties, reminding me of the tonga driver who had taken me to the railway station in Hassan. He did not fit the profile of someone who would want to hire a helicopter, timid and reluctant to step forward. I asked the security officer if this was the man who wanted to hire the helicopter. ‘It’s him, Sir,’ the officer said. I was very sceptical but said nothing, taking the man upstairs to my room.

  The man spoke in Kannada with a whiff of accent. He told me his name. I put him at ease and asked him what had brought him here. What he said was touching in the extreme. He said he had all along wanted to make a memorable special gift to his sister who was soon to be married. Being the eldest in the family, he wanted his sister’s nikaah, or wedding ceremony, to take place in a flying helicopter.

  The man lived in a village, sixty-four kilometres from Bengaluru. He wanted us to fly the helicopter to his village, pick up the bride, bridegroom, and the priest, and take off for the ceremony. He said his grandfather’s nickname was Aane Sahib (elephant landlord) because he had organized the nikaah ceremonies of all his seven children on elephant-back. The grandson wanted to do something to revive the family tradition. He was unable to arrange for elephants but a helicopter would do. He had often seen our helicopters take off and land from the gates of our heliport. Could I fulfil his dream for him?

  I asked him what he did for a living. He was a small-time trader. He moved between weekly village bazars buying and selling chillies. He was not rich but doing well. He had decided to spend all his savings on his sister’s wedding. I was touched by the strength of his resolve and by the brotherly devotion to his sister. I straightaway offered him a 50 per cent discount. Even making allowance for the discount, I had calculated that we would operationally break even.

  He asked for the price. I said it would be Rs 75,000. He showed no emotion. He said he would get back in two hours. Quite frankly, I doubted his return and forgot all about him. At about 5 p.m., my security officer announced his arrival. He had returned with Rs 75,000 in cash. I called Jayanth and asked him
to organize the sortie. I told the man that some preparations would have to be made. He would have to identify an open field for the helicopter to land and ensure that the soil was watered and dust-free. He would also need to throw a cordon to keep off jaywalkers from getting too close to the helicopter; an accident could occur if we didn’t take precautions.

  A great human impact story was about to unfold. A grandson’s helicopter would stand in for a grandfather’s elephant. I didn’t lose time and called Maya Sharma of NDTV, the reporters for Star News, and a few newspaper correspondents. Our customer wanted us to do three rounds over the village mosque too and drop some flowers. He said we could expect 10,000 people to watch the helicopter wedding. I watched him in disbelief as he left the room.

  On the appointed day, we carried two TV channel crew in the helicopter. It was a ten-minute helicopter ride from Jakkur to the village. A fire smoke signal had been set up. We spotted the landing area from the rising smoke but an ocean of humanity was milling around and we were unable to land. We failed once. People had overstepped the cordon and were rushing towards the helicopter. Jayanth was worried. The tail rotor was capable of hurting or even killing somebody. The police had underestimated the crowd. Jayanth tried a second landing but failed. I then asked Jayanth to manoeuvre a landing that allowed me to get off and control the crowds.