New Delhi: Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata will flirt with heights when he flies the multi-role combat aircraft F-16 at the Aero India 2007 international exposition at Yelahanka, near Bangalore, on Thursday.
The 69-year-old industrialist, who inaugurated five-day event on Wednesday, told journalists that he was looking for it to happen.
Ratan Tata has already undergone a medical test to fly the multi-role combat aircraft. US-based aerospace major Lockheed Martin, the makers of the F-16, is a participant in the air show. Lockheed has been lobbying hard to sell 128 F-16s to the Indian Air Force.
It would be the first time that Tata would be flying a fighter even though he had secured a flying license when he was 17-year-old.
Tata has gone on record, saying that the thought of the F-16 flight 'excites me very much'. On Sunday, in an exclusive interview to CNN-IBN, he had described "flying as a passion".
Ratan Tata's predecessor JRD Tata is celebrated as the father of India's civil aviation. JRD Tata had launched Tata Airlines in 1932, which was nationalised in 1953 and rechristened Air-India. Though the Tata Group now holds under 10 per cent stake in no-frills carrier SpiceJet, Ratan Tata has ruled out plans to enter the civil aviation space.
Ratan Tata himself flies the Falcon 200 owned by group company Indian Hotels. Last year, President APJ Abdul Kalam became the first commander-in-chief of the armed forces to undertake a historic 30 minute sortie on IAF's Sukhoi-30 MKI.
In 2003, then Defence Minister George Fernandes had flown the Sukhoi as well the MIG-21
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