London: Kerala Man Flies Through Europe With Family On A Plane He Built During Lockdown

Thamarakshan had ordered a kit for a new aircraft from Johannesburg-based company Sling Aircraft and used the pandemic-induced lockdown as the opportunity to work on the time-consuming project

New Delhi: It’s a dream come true for Ashok Aliseril Thamarakshan, who originally hails from Alappuzha in Kerala, as he achieved the remarkable feat of travelling to the UK and Europe in an aircraft he built himself. The London-based mechanical engineer built a four-seater aeroplane during the Covid-induced lockdown which took him nearly 18 months to complete, according to the Times of India report.

Thamarakshan now flies with his wife and two daughters in a home-built aeroplane to travel across the UK and Europe. The family has travelled to Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic among other countries in their single-engine Sling TSi, which Thamarakshan has named "G-Diya” after his younger daughter Diya.

Thamarakshan, who is the son of former MLA AV Thamarakshan, had moved to the UK in 2006 for higher education after pursuing BTech from Palakkad Engineering College.

He currently stays in London with his wife, Abhilasha.

"Initially, I used to rent small two-seater aircraft for trips after acquiring my pilot license in 2018,” he said stating that the two-seater aircraft couldn’t meet his requirement after his family grew.

It is then he realised he needed a four-seater plane, but such aircraft are not easy to procure, so Thamarakshan had thought of building one himself.

"I learned about a Johannesburg-based company Sling Aircraft launching a new aircraft named Sling TSI in 2018," he said, as per the report. Upon visiting the factory, Thamarakshan ordered a kit and used the pandemic-induced lockdown as the opportunity to work on the time-consuming project.

Abhilasha told The Sun: “We started saving money during the first lockdown, and 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.”

The project cost an estimated Rs 1.8 crore in Indian currency.

He flew for the first time in February 2022 after building the aircraft. Travelling in home-built aircraft does not pose a problem in the US and Europe, the engineer revealed.