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by texelmobile on August 03, 2017

Seaplanes are indeed objects of wonder, for its capacity to manoeuvre through both air and water. And this Sunday, a seaplane designed and developed entirely in India will have its first trial run ever!

Father-son duo from Kochi, Shabel and Godson D’souza have built a six-seater aircraft that will soon take off from city’s backwaters.

While Godson has designed the plane, Shabel along with his employees worked hard for almost a month to erect the flying machine in their welding workshop in Ponnarimangalam near Bolgatty.

For representational purposes. Source: Pixabay.

“It took us 20 days to build this craft. Only 30 per cent of its body will touch water, and the remaining 70 per cent will be above water level,” Shabel told Times of India.

The seaplane is fitted with the engine of a Maruti Omni car and has a maximum speed of 100 km per hour. This comes as an advantage, for regular boats cannot operate at such an elevated speed in the backwaters.

Weighing close to a tonne, the plane is fully air-conditioned and has four-geared functionality. Also, airtight bows attached on the wings of the craft helps in maintaining the balance. But the seaplane wasn’t some random innovation. After a bout of trials, prototypes, and insight, did they create the final craft.

“As the first step, we built a prototype of a vessel using ACP sheet and conducted a trial run. We found that the vessel was weightless and it did not sink. This gave us the confidence to build a seaplane using ACP sheet, steel frames and fibre coating,” said Godson.