TRANSCRIPT
REPORTER: Amos Roberts
The kids on these two buses have set out on the trip of a lifetime. They all live in extreme poverty, but today they're going to have their horizons expanded. They're about to experience something most people in the West take for granted.
GIRL (Translation): There. There. They look so small. We always thought we'll never see an airplane but we're so happy, we can't tell how much fun it will be.
BOY (Translation): We're very happy and we feel that when we see the airplane, we'll be thrilled.
MAN (Translation): They've been wondering what it will be like. We only see it flying. How does it fly? Will it take us up? How will it look up close? Where will we sit? How big will the wings be? How big is the plane? When we get in will it be the same as we see in the movies? These are the questions they ask.
Their pilot today will be Bahadur Chand Gupta. He's spent 28 years in the aviation industry and sharing that experience with India's poor has become a personal mission.
BAHADUR CHAND GUPTA, PILOT: It is a dream because it is beyond their reach still, they are very poor people. They don't have the means. And when they see the aircraft flying over their head, they want to have an experience, they want to see, they want to see how does it look. It is a dream for them.
MAN (Translation): Not much further, we're almost there. We can see it.
After a 5-hour bus trip to India's capital, New Delhi, the kids are finally here.
DR NIRMAL JINDAL: Hi, how are you, you want to go to the plane? You have to take your boarding pass. You want to go to Bombay? OK. Flight for Bombay, OK.
Dr Nirmal Jindal is Mr Gupta's wife.
DR NIRMAL JINDAL: Boarding pass. What is it called? Boarding pass.
And when she's not introducing children to the joys of air travel she's a professor of political science at Delhi University.
DR NIRMAL JINDAL: Alright. Welcome to the plane. Go. Board the plane.
Every weekend, Gupta and his wife invite villagers and slum dwellers on board their Airbus 300.
DR NIRMAL JINDAL: I'm on your flight to look after you. Before the plane takes off, I need to tell you to take some precautions. First of all, you put on your seatbelts. Why do we fasten the seatbelts?
But no matter what precautions they take, or try to take, these kids won't actually be flying anywhere today. It might not be far from the airport, but Gupta's Airbus 300 is well and truly grounded. It's missing one of its wings, and part of the tail section. And it hasn't left this quiet Delhi suburb since Gupta brought it here three years ago.
DR NIRMAL JINDAL: It is for the first time that a full flight plane is shifted from the international airport to residential area for public view.
This home movie narrated by Gupta's wife describes how the aging Airbus was completely dismantled, transported, and then put back together.
DR NIRMAL JINDAL: To shift this plane from an international airport to this spot was not an easy task and it took almost two years to complete it.
When the plane was finally opened to the public, it was the culmination of a long-held dream for Gupta. As a boy growing up in a small village he was obsessed with the idea of flight, and in 1980 he became a mechanical engineer for Indian Airlines.
BAHADUR CHAND GUPTA: When I joined Indian Airlines, as an engineering officer, and I went to my village, they felt that I'm a very, very big person in Delhi. And I can do anything for them.
What the villagers wanted more than anything was to go on board a plane. But when Gupta tried to sneak someone into the secure zone at the airport, he was caught.
BAHADUR CHAND GUPTA: Yeah, so for security reasons he was never able I was helpless, handicapped!
So you decided that instead of bringing the village to the plane, you would bring the plane to the village. And so he did. The fuselage now juts out over a neighbouring village. People here were among the first to get a peek.
WOMAN (Translation): I took my kids as well. They were so happy to see it. I'd never seen one before. I was wondering what it would be like. When I first saw it, I was scared. But when I went in I felt good. Now we've seen it, I know what it's like and it feels good.
WOMAN 2 (Translation): I sat in the chair, it was a very soft chair. I saw it. It's like the inside of a house, not like a bus.
REPORTER: Would you like one day to fly on a real plane?
WOMAN 2 (Translation): No, no I don't want to be on a plane that actually flies! They tie you up. How can I fly in such a plane?
DR NIRMAL JINDAL: And they're scared also, they don't want to fly. Large number of Indians when they come here, when they climb the stairs, they are horrified. I mean, they know that, we tell that this is a stationary plane they know that it never flies, but the moment that they step in they have a kind of fear that it is going to fly and what is going to happen to them.
BAHADUR CHAND GUPTA: Then we force them to come up and have the feeling. If somebody is afraid, then it is my duty to give them the complete environment, comfortable, you know, flight basically.
DR NIRMAL JINDAL: Black box. Black box. What's it called?
CHILDREN: Black box.
DR NIRMAL JINDAL (Translation): Don't do it like that. You have to unfasten it. How will you do it? He slipped out of the belt!
BAHADUR CHAND GUPTA: Do it again. Do it again. Let me see how you did it. Show me how you'll slip out now. Come on, do it. OK, you don't do it like this.
DR NIRMAL JINDAL (Translation): You have to sit. You have to learn it. No, no, no, show us how to open it? You have to learn it.
The first thing in aviation industry is discipline, because most of the people who are coming from slums or from poor background, they are not very much disciplined.
Yes. Very good. Now you know how to do it. So they have to remain quiet, they have to queue up and they have to be patient. They are very, very serious, they are trying to catch each and every word. At that time I try to give them the message of drugs control, population control, and AIDS control.
What is the biggest problem for India today? Population growth. Give him a big hand. Get up please. Overpopulation. Come here. Give him a big hand.
So you use the fact that you have a captive audience as an excuse to get some other messages across?
DR NIRMAL JINDAL: Yeah, yeah. Otherwise it's difficult to gather people. I see that children from 10 to 15 years of age, they are listening to me very carefully and they're trying to understand what I'm saying.
There's another bigger problem for India which we need to control. What is it? Tell me. AIDS. Heard of it? Do you know about AIDS? What is AIDS? AIDS is a disease that can spread. I can't give you all the information, but you must try and find out about it.
BAHADUR CHAND GUPTA: We are giving the free trip to the people and we want to use this thing to serve the society. So we want that the people, the children, they should be very good citizen of India tomorrow.
REPORTER: How do they see the plane?
DR NIRMAL JINDAL: It's more than a palace for them. I mean, here you know there are a lot of palaces that are open for public view. But plane is one of the things you know, they can surround the airport and they can see the plane only from outside. But from inside, it's impossible for them for the whole of their life to see the plane from inside. So this is the difference. It makes a lot of difference to their life that they have seen the plane.
And it's not just the poor who come on board. During the week, the plane is used commercially to train air hostesses and engineers. Middle-class Indians visit as well. Many have flown before, but they also get lectures on mid-air etiquette, especially when it comes to obeying the air hostess.
DR NIRMAL JINDAL: How you call the air hostess? This is the button for the air hostess.
BAHADUR CHAND GUPTA: You can stand here, OK, and two people can be here. And this? The throttle lever. We use it to increase speed. Faster. Slower. OK? Did you see it? Like we accelerate a car.
REPORTER: So maybe this is your childhood dream as well come true?
BAHADUR CHAND GUPTA: Yeah, right, right in a way. Yeah, it's fun, it's real fun. Because I'm an engineer. And we feel that pilot is boss of the airline, he's the highest-paid person, so to be here like a pilot is really very interesting.
GIRL (Translation): It's a nice feeling to see the inside. We'd thought we could never be pilots. And now that we came here, I think one day I'll grow up to be a pilot. Air hostess.
REPORTER: Do you think any of these children ever imagined that they would see the inside of an airplane?
MAN (Translation): Never. I haven't even dreamt of it. When we told them, they didn't believe me. They thought I was kidding. I told them "There is a plane there. We'll take you to sit in it." They said "Who'll let us sit inside? We are from such poor families. We have no money." For them it's as if the fairies have descended from the skies.