Mumbai: Amol Yadav from India has done perhaps what no one else has been able to do: build his very own plane on the top of his building's terrace! When neighbours initially expressed curiosity about all the noise that Yadav had been creating on his terrace, he said that he was building furniture for his flat. However, curious eyes soon drifted to his terrace where they saw what seemed like the tail of an aircraft sticking out from the roof. People then figured out that Yadav was building an aircraft right on the roof of his house!
What makes this even more surprising is that Yadav's building is in Kandivali, a crowded suburb of Mumbai, where space is a luxury. Yadav used the little space that he had to build a single-engine, high wing, land aircraft modelled on the Cessna 172 Stationair. Incredible, isn't it?
For seven years, Yadav and his crew of welders and fabricators worked under a tarp shed that covered the 1200 sq ft roof that was his workshop to make his dream come true.
When Yadav started at flight school in Georgia, USA, he discovered that he may have been airsick. However, Yadav managed to focus his mind on his dream (which, he says, was to fly and overcame his air sickness. There wasn't another option, he has said in interviews.
Amol Yadav and five other students from his flight school in Georgia invested their money and bought a Cessna 172 that someone had put on sale. Not only did he learn to fly on that aircraft, Yadav also learnt how to repair and maintain it.
When Yadav returned home, however, he saw to his dismay that the aviation sector was still quite nascent and there wasn't a hobby aviation scene in India. No one was manufacturing civilian aircraft.
So, Yadav decided to build one on his own.
He started by sourcing an engine from an old Shaktiman military truck. He then began scouring the city's bookstores and street-side book stalls for any reading material on aviation.
Yadav used his father's empty construction site. When it was done, Yadav towed the fuselage with his motorbike to an airfield where on December 17, 2003, the first Indian-made civilian aircraft was taxied. This was exactly one hundred years after the first flight of the Wright Brothers.
However, DGCA, the body that controls aviation in India, refused to grant his aircraft a license to fly or even a hangar space. His first aircraft – the first civilian aircraft to have been built in India, by an Indian – lay in an abandoned shed and eventually had to be discarded.
After the disappointment of losing his first aircraft, Amol Yadav found himself a job at Jet Airways and finally began to fly. Thus, his dream of becoming a pilot actually came true.
In 2009, Yadav decided to begin building a new aircraft all over again. This time, however, he chose to do it on top of his building.
Yadav set up a holding company in India and began to import aircraft parts from the US and six years later, the aircraft was officially built.
After exhibiting his aircraft at the Make in India Fair that was being held in Mumbai, Yadav received a lot of accolades. Everyone from the Chief Minister of Maharashtra to the Prime Minister of India have acknowledged his feat. However, his dream of receiving permission from the DCGA still remains a pipedream.
The Government of Maharashtra has granted him a hangar space at Dhule Airport where he can park his aircraft and even work on other projects. Meanwhile, he is continuing to apply for permission to get his aircraft air bound.