Crowning glory
Early this year, when industrialist and aviator Vijaypat Singhania announced his intention to break the existing world record of high-altitude balloon flight, nobody doubted him.
Singhania not only shattered the 17-year-old record held by a Swedish national based in the UK, Per Lindstrand, of travelling 64,997 feet in a hot-air balloon above the earth in the USA, but bettered it by a good 4,855 feet when he was floating at 69,852 feet. This is at a height no living being had been and is nearly two-and-half times the height of Mount Everest.
The multi-crore “Project MI-70K” (“Mission Impossible 70,000 feet”), as Singhania’s adventure was christened, will be a crowning glory on Singhania’s series of achievements and honours in
Indian and world aviation.
“I have been an adventurous person all my life and wanted to do something that would lift my country’s image. I had thought of doing this balloon flight for the last seven to eight years,” he had told the media a few months ago.
Following the successful trailblazing balloon adventure, the 67-year-old chairman-emeritus of the Raymond Group, now joins the ranks of Yuri Gagarin, Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Kalpana Chawla and a handful of mortals around the world, who became legends after scaling previously unscaled pinnacles of grit and glory.
Singhania shot into the limelight when he completed the fastest solo flight in a microlight aircraft from London to Ahmedabad — a distance of 5430 miles (approximately 8,738 km) — in 22 days in August-September 1988, creating a new record that was noted by the Guinness Book of Records.
In his memoirs, An Angel in the Cockpit, he narrated how he had encountered hostile reception in countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and once his microlight almost crashed into the shark-infested Mediterranean Sea. He bagged the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI)’s gold medal — considered the Nobel Prize equivalent of the world of aviation sports, following a 24-day 34,000 km odyssey during the World Air Race-1994.
An impressive 5,000-plus flying hours below his seat-belt, Dr Singhania has truly emerged a living legend in India — like another great aviation enthusiast, the Bharat Ratna, the late JRD Tata.
