Prime Minister Narendra Modi made quite a splash on the campaign trail when he flew from the Sabarmati River to Dharoi Dam in North Gujarat on a seaplane. The press and social media were awash with praise at this unique feat, which wasn’t all that unique at all.
The first Indian seaplane was launched in 2010, and named ‘Jal Hans’, with commercial services launching in 2011 from Port Blair. And both India, and our politicians, seem to have missed the seaplane party.
The first ever production one, the Felixstowe F.2 was built during World War I, for use by the British Royal Air Force and Royal Naval Air Service. That’s 1917, we’re talking about. At this rate, we’ll soon be plastering our primetime programmes with news of prominent politicians carrying the first-ever transistor radios. Or perhaps, the steam engine will be the transportation of the future.
The Prime Minister flew in on a six-seater Quest Kodiak 100 seaplane. A single-engine, fixed-wing aircraft, with an unpressurised cabin — no ACs here, ma — the Kodiak was identified by its call sign, plastered to the sides of the craft, ‘N181KQ’. It’s also an ‘amphibious’ aircraft, which can land on and take-off from land.
The aircraft is the only one manufactured by the Idaho-based Quest Aircraft Company, but it should soon become much more commonplace around the country. A prominent low-cost flight service has signed a deal with Quest to buy 100 of these aircraft in the hopes that they can reach previously inaccessible locations, and operate from poor quality runways.
With changes in mass transport like the burgeoning advent of full-sized aircraft, the improvement of surface transport services across the world, and with their limited capacity, seaplanes are now much less common than they used to be in the decades after the War.
Today, they are primarily used by private operators as luxury travel — you know, for when they need to get to their luxury yachts, or in rescue services when roadways are blocked. So, not only are seaplanes not novel anymore, they’re actually fairly passé. Better late than never?
