oliver2002

East West MD Thakiyudeen Wahid was assassinated by Chota Rajan. It seems that even if you ran a big airline in Mumbai you had to pay the mafia

I remember flying Damania, ModiLuft and East West. I was a big 9W fan, especially because they had relatively new aircraft and the student tickets were easy to get. ModiLuft had a falling out with LH because they couldn't afford the tab for leasing and fuel of the ancient 732s LH stuck them with. OK, at the time they were about 12-15 years old, but the engines were horrid. LH Technik did their support in India, and the inflight service, cutlery etc were all to LH standard. LH had just emerged from the cold war and was in the process of being denationalised. ModiLuft was one of its first experiments as a global player.

abhilife2001

I too recall Vayudoot.. Was living in Shillong for some years as a kid and had 1/2yrly trips between Shillong / Guwahati and Calcutta on their old fokker's..

I guess they were taken over by alliance air ?

AJLondon

Yup, that is what I thought as well.

I remember boxes of food (kind of like a cardboard box you would get from a pastry shop, but with one sandwich, a piece of cake and a savoury snack) that were handed out to every pax on a Vayudoot flight from DEL-JAI a long time ago! Most carried the box as there wasn't enough time to eat it all onboard!

Kind of different from the Rs 80 for a muffin on Jet Konnect these days!!

abhilife2001

I always finished it as a child

manuc

it was not just East West but IIRC there were plenty of rumours on Jet Airways / Goyal had mafia links as well - there was even some sort of an official probe or proposed official probe of this. When they applied for US rights there was an attempt in the US to block them on this pretext.... luckily none of this was ever substantiated

Keyser

east-west & vayudoot come to mind....

wasn't vayudoot always a part of ai????

abhilife2001

[QUOTE=Keyser;16043441]east-west & vayudoot come to mind....

wasn't vayudoot always a part of ai????[/QUOTE]

Am not sure but am sure that it was govt owned..

Modiluft comes to mind.. I recall how happy I was when I was flying DEL - CCU the next day after diwali and they gave me a nice tiffin box as a gift
Ofcourse I was a child then..

rsh913

Was dating a Modiluft FA for a while in the early 90's. Made quite a few landings. Never made it on any of their 732's though.
Not sure it counts. They did have great uniforms.

malgudi

FedUp2

I guess I am dating myself with this post...I recall my first flight (in the early 60s) was on a scheduled flight from CCU to COH on a gooney bird (DC3) operated by Jamair - supposedly owned by the Maharaja of Jamnagar.

UA Fan

I remember seeing all these airlines collapse and did think 9W would make, but glad they did. Now if they could get their act together and join some alliance but still keep all their exisiting FFP tie-ups.

rathin100

Awesome! Do you have any meorablia from that flight (tickets BPs etc) by any chance?

zoonil

no one mentioned Pawan Hans.

They still have passenger service in Kashmir, North East India and some outerlying areas:

http://www.pawanhans.co.in/site/inne...s=2&menu_id=97

AJLondon

Awesome! That's a clear winner so far.

FedUp2

Unfortunately not, but for many years (well in the 2000s), you could see the remnants of the Jamair DC3 near the old WW2 era hangars at Dum Dum. They may well be there even now, but the taxiway has changed and I do not recall going anywhere near those old hangars of late.