Debashish Sarkar (Hindustan Times)
In a heart-warming case of cross-border goodwill, a US-based Pakistani businessman played Good Samaritan to a team of Indian students who were stranded at Dallas airport due to excess baggage concerns.
The incident occurred while Phoenix – an award-winning team of aero-designers from the National Institute of Technology-Jamshedpur (NIT-J) – was returning home on March 16, after participating in a competition at Texas.
Amaad, hailing from Karachi, was waiting in queue at the Dallas airport immigration counter when officials asked the NIT-J team to pay a fine of $260 because their package reportedly contained a model aircraft that exceeded prescribed dimensional limits. “Nobody had stopped or fined us when we took the same box to Texas. We had just $70 at our disposal. We tried asking the officials to let us check in because we were students, but our efforts went in vain. It was then that Amaad came forward and paid the fine for us, allowing us to return to India,” team captain Aditya Barnwal told HT here on Tuesday.
“When we asked for Amaad’s account details, so we could refund the money after returning home, he said there was no need for that,” he added.
The third-year mechanical engineering student said Amaad looked like exactly like “a fellow-Indian”, and it was only when the grateful team members enquired about his home state that he revealed Karachi as his place of origin.
The NIT-J team ranked eleventh among the 75 teams that participated in the competition organised by the Society of Automotive Engineers Aero Design, Fort Worth, Texas, between March 11 and 13. It was also adjudged first among the 12 Indian teams that competed in the show.
“Our model aircraft was rated as the best for most stable flight and payload capacity. The piece has a wing span of 96 inches and a payload capacity that’s 2.5 times more than its own weight of 10 pounds. It has a maximum payload capacity of 24 lbs (around 10 kg),” said Raja Varshney and Raj Kothari, Barnwal’s team members.
So, what are the applications of such a vehicle? “This aircraft can be used for varied purposes, including surveillance, gathering weather data, dropping food packets during disasters, etc,” Barnwal said.
A team of 23 NIT-J students had built the plane in six months at a cost of Rs 1.50 lakh under the guidance of Dr MK Sinha, mechanical engineering professor.
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