'Air India' chosen via poll 75 years ago: Tata Group

Mukesh Ranjan

New Delhi, February 6

Days after taking over the management control of Air India, the Tata Group today said the name of the airline was chosen over 75 years ago through an opinion poll among the company’s employees.

Sharing nuggets of information about the history of the airline, the group said, back in 1946, when Tata Airlines expanded from a division of Tata Sons into a company, a name was to be chosen.

“The choice for the name of India’s first airline company came down to Indian Airlines, Pan-Indian Airlines, Trans-Indian Airlines and Air India,” the Tata Group tweeted.

The Tatas had lost control of Air India nearly seven decades ago before taking it back on Januray 27, 2022.

The Tata Group also shared two pictures, including an excerpt from the Tata Monthly Bulletin of 1946, which Air India retweeted through its official handle. In the bulletin, it was said Tatas were faced with the problem of finding a name for the new airline which they were forming to take over and extend the activities of the Tata Airlines which had hitherto functioned as a department of Tata Sons Ltd.

The bulletin read: “To the innately democratic mind of the head of the Tata organisation, it seemed a good idea to let the selection be made by popular opinion in Bombay House through a sort of poll or sample opinion survey.”

Voting papers were distributed to ascertain the views of representative sections of opinion among Tata employees and they were requested to indicate their first and second preferences. “The first count revealed 64 votes for Air India, 51 for Indian Airlines, 28 for Trans-Indian Airlines and 19 for Pan-Indian Airlines. When the less favoured names had been eliminated, the final count showed 72 votes for Air India and 58 for Indian Airlines,” it read, while adding that thus, “the name of the new company comes to be Air India”.