Bengaluru: Royal Nag Aviation (RNA), a city-based life-size aircraft restaurant model making company, is finding many buyers from far and wide, a company official said on Saturday.
“We got orders from Rajasthan, Dehradun and Vadodara for making aircraft shaped and themed restaurants and bars,” RNA Chief Executive Naresh Kumar Ganesh told IANS.
Established in 2013, RNA crafts multiple aircraft models such as Cessna, Hansa, Beechcraft and the widely popular Airbus A320, which cost Rs 1.9 crore including the freight charges.
“Many of our aircraft models are used for training purposes. We make smaller aircraft, more than 100 such models are all over India. Two-seater, 4-seater and 6-seater aircraft… Bengaluru itself has 15-20 such small models,” said Ganesh, who uses glass fibre, aluminium and steel to build the models.
Mimicking a five-star hotel restaurant, the aircraft restaurant builder is currently making one for a Vadodara-based buyer who plans set up the aircraft restaurant in Gujarat.
“Our first aircraft restaurant order came from Dehradun. Currently, we have two more orders, from Hyderabad and Surat and negotiating for a third one in Rajasthan,” said Ganesh.
Once an aircraft is built, it is transported in sections of 40 feet each on four trailers, which on assembly at the destination will stretch to 123 feet in length and 115 feet in width.
Though RNA builds the aircraft restaurant, the seating arrangement is taken care of by the restaurateur, Ganesh said.
Ganesh said there are already three old real aircraft turned restaurants in North India, Ludhiana, Delhi and Patiala.
“They are all original aircraft. But they have serious problem because they are 40 years old aircraft. But our models which we make are 10 times stronger than the original aircraft,” said Ganesh.
Buoyed by the teeming business with the aircraft restaurant in Dehradun, with 100 people eating at a time and others waiting for two hours for a chance, Ganesh said the Dehradun buyer ordered one more restaurant to set up at Haridwar.
“The Dehradun restaurant has been clocking a turnover of Rs 3 lakh everyday, making a profit of Rs 1.5 lakh per day,” said Ganesh who will start work on the new order in March.
It takes six months to build an aircraft restaurant, procuring aluminium from Hindalco, and bulk fibre glass and steel from local dealers.
Ganesh bought a scrap aircraft from Air India for Rs 2 crore to makes moulds out of it to make lookalikes.
The company makes any aircraft model in 1:1 to 1:15 scale sizes, including small table models and counts Apollo Engineering College, Alliance University and MITE as its clients.
Though Ganesh has been impressing crowds with aviation themed aircraft restaurants across the country, he did not find any takers in his home city of Bengaluru.
“I am really upset, Bangalore crowd is really elite. They have sufficient money, unfortunately nobody wants. They are not aware of it,” quipped Ganesh.
