Image Courtesy - Soorarai Pottru


With the triumph of his latest release, Suriya is riding high on success by the movie “Soorarai Pottru” based on the book “Simply Fly” which depicts the life story of a man who made flying come true to millions of Indians through his low-cost airline services which charged less compared to others this film also brings us through his journey of hardships and struggles to overcome the airline competition which was already prevailing in the country.


                                                                                         Image Courtesy - Soorarai Pottru

The real man behind all the success and low-cost aviation is Capt. G.R. Gopinath a retired air force pilot with only a single aim to make every Indian fly. He introduced the concept of selling the airplane ticket for 1INR only. He even broke the system of travel agencies where there were many middlemen involved and a lot of taxes which increased the ticket price. He also introduced the system of booking airplane tickets through the internet which is considered a revolution in the airline ticket booking system. His customers mainly included people of the lower class, middle class, and upper-middle class. He named his venture Air Deccan which began operations on 25 August 2003 with a flight from Bangalore to Hubli. There were a few incidents which bought a bad reputation for the company, one of them being in 2003, on the initially planned launch flight from Begumpet airport, Hyderabad to Vijayawada, having onboard guests including Pratap Reddy, M Venkaiah Naidu and other political leaders, one of the engines caught fire during taxiing for takeoff and the flight was aborted and all passengers survived the incident. This made people think about their safety and a lot of them were reconsidering the option of opting for Air Deccan as their preferred travel partner. But they made a comeback the same year defying all odds to become one of the successful airline venture ever to be launched in India. Seeing the low cost aviation boom many companies like Spicejet, Indigo, and GoAir set out their feet to enter the competition.

Watching this movie and getting to know about a great man’s journey into the skies has been inspiring and has received a lot of appreciation from all the critics and audience across the country. Hope more films like these make it into the limelight and enlighten us with awe-inspiring stories.




It is not the elite that I consider as my customers. It is the humble cleaning women of my office, the auto-rickshaw driver, and other such people that we would like to cater to. We want them to dream that they too can fly, and we want to make that dream happen.
 
- G.R.Gopinath                                                                                                                                                                                

 

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