AIRLIFT – an untold Air India story

Read about the great PR exercise 

in pre-Google and Internet Days!

A Flashback 
By Jitender Bhargava

The film 'Airlift' has brought the evacuation of over 1.17 lakh Kuwait-resident Indians once again on the centre stage after 25 years. How did the feat get listed as a record in the Guinness book makes for an interesting reading!

I, as the head of Public Relations Department, was issuing press releases on a daily basis to inform the media about the number of flights operated in the past 24 hours; number of stranded passengers safely brought from Amman in Jordan to various Indian cities, next day's plan of flight operations, etc.

It struck me after about 20 odd days, by which time only about a third of the total had been evacuated, whether we had in the process created a record.

Since it wasn't the era of Google which enables one to source information easily, I walked from my office in Air India building to the book store in Eros cinema complex near Churchgate in Mumbai; picked up a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records to access the address of the editor/publisher of Guinness book.

Armed with the address, I posted (email did not exist then) a letter to Guinness Editor enquiring if any record of evacuation by a civil airliner existed? A fortnight later Guinness replied through a letter that it did not have a record in their book.

In the meantime, evacuation continued at a brisk pace with Air India deploying as many aircraft as possible and Indian Airlines and Indian Air Force extending a helping hand with their aircraft to bolster capacity to meet the growing demand. After the evacuation operation was completed, I sent a comprehensive letter to Guinness providing details of total number of passengers carried, flights operated, duration of the entire exercise, etc. Guinness accepted the record and duly intimated us through a letter.

It was only after a few months that the new edition of the Guinness Book of World Records was published with Air India's achievement duly listed.

I once again walked to the same book store from where I had sourced the Guinness address to buy a copy of the book for our company's archives.