Read about the great PR exercise
in pre-Google and Internet Days!
A Flashback
By Jitender Bhargava
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.
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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.
