Man builds plane during Covid lockdown, travels to Europe with it
text_fields
London: As the aviation industry recovers from the negative impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, Ashok Aliseril Thamarakshan, a man from Kerala, is travelling across Europe with his family on a self-made plane. Now London-based, Ashok Aliseril Thamarakshan built the plane during the Covid-19 lockdown.
A native of Alappuzha, Kerala, Thamarakshan, worked for 18 months to build the four-seater aircraft. The four-seater aircraft model "Sling TSI" is named "G-Diya", after his younger daughter, reported the Times of India. In 2006, Thamarakshan moved to the UK for his Master's degree and now works at Ford Motor Company.
Thamarakshan is the son of former MLA AV Thamarakshan.
Thamarakshan holds a pilot's license. So far he has visited Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic with his family in the four-seater.
Thamarakshan talks about how he got the idea to build a plane. He said, "Initially, I used to rent small two-seater aircraft for trips after acquiring my pilot licence in 2018. But since my family comprises my wife and two daughters, I required four-seater aircraft. But they are rare and even if I could get one, they were very old."
His research into homemade aircraft was due to this difficulty in finding the right four-seater plane that could fly his entire family. Subsequently, during the lockdown, he learned about the subject and built one, NDTV reported.
His wife Abhilasha spoke to The Sun in January, a month before the family took its maiden voyage on the plane built by Thamarakshan about how the family started saving money during the first lockdown "We knew we always wanted to have our own plane, and in the first few months we were saving a lot of money so we thought we would give it a go," Mrs Thamarakshan said.
He started by visiting the factory of the Johannesburg-based company Sling Aircraft after finding out that they are launching a new plane in 2018, the Sling TSI. After the factory visit, Thamarakshan ordered a kit to make his own plane.
With plenty of time due to the pandemic-induced lockdown along with the money saved during this period allowed Mr Thamarakshan to work on this project. The construction cost of the aircraft is estimated at Rs 1.8 crore.