From 50 Years Ago: Air India's First Jet Year.

The report of the working of Air-India Inter-national during the financial year 1960-61 is of unusual interest, because this was a year of very big changes in the operations of Air-India. It was the first year of the operation of Boeing jet planes; the first year of the working of the Tripartite Pool between Air-India, BOAC and Qantas; and also the first year of the exten-sion of the Air-India service to New York. The advent of Boeing jets revolutionised Air-India’s operations. The three Boeings which it put into service during the year together had a larger carrying capacity than its entire fleet of nine super-constellations. A fourth Boeing was delivered to the Corporation in April this year. Two more are on order. They are scheduled to be delivered by March of April next year. With the strictest restrictions on foreign exchange for travel – restrictions which have been stiffened rather than relaxed – Air-India, nevertheless, has been doing pretty well. That, along with the other world air lines, Air-India has also started and main-tained a scheme for foreign travel on pay-ment by instalments goes to show that its business has not been affected at all by the foreign exchange difficulties which everyone going out of India on his own has inevitably to face. The Boeing jets came into operation in April 1960 and Air-India entered the highly competitive Atlantic route by extend-ing its service from London to New York two months later…