Indian American Ravinder Bansal is perhaps the first community member to embark on such a journey.
Indian American entrepreneur Ravinder Bansal, who lives in Clarence, New York, is taking a solo flight in a single-engine airplane from the US to India and back. Bansal is embarking on this ambitious trip to raise $750,000 for an MRI machine in a hospital in the small town of Ambala, Haryana, in India.
The 100-bed hospital Rotary Ambala Cancer and General Hospital has been built with donations from philanthropists both in the US and India. The contribution is also a tribute to his elder brother Subhash Bansal’s wife, Sneh Bansal, who died of cancer in India, in 2005.
The solo flight would begin on July 4, provided the weather is favorable, from the Buffalo Niagara International Airport. The 19,878-mile trip includes several stops in different countries including England, France, Italy, Greece, Jordan, UAE, Oman, and India while going; and for return, Bansal would come via Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Japan, Russia, and Canada.
The trip is expected to take about six weeks, in total. It took more than six months for a team to prepare the logistics of the flight. The total expenses are about $100,000 that Bansal is spending from his own pocket. He would fly a single-engine Cessna 400, that he has owned for the last 11 years.
“My family took me to the temple on Saturday to pray and seek blessings of the Gods for a safe journey and a successful mission,” Bansal blogged on Wednesday. “With all the formalities now complete, I am all set to go. No backing off now!!!”
Bansal completed his mechanical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. After a putting a few years in a job, he started his own business AirSep, a medical oxygen therapy company. By dint of hard work, the company was catapulted from mere three employees to more than 600 employees. He sold his business in 2014 for more than $170 million.