Meet a otor
Pro M
eet Captain
Captain Neeraj Maden BY MICHAEL ROCKS-MACQUEEN
Neeraj
Maden, the chief training instructor at the Institute of Flight Safety in New
Delhi, India. He also pilots a MD 900 VIP-confi gured NOTAR helicopter for Simm Samm Airways, based out of Mumbai (also known as Bombay). The company has 27 employees that cater to an “exclusive clientele,” but Capt. Maden has another expression for the passengers. “We mainly fl y the privileged and fat cats.” Maybe that description should be construed broadly, considering His Holiness the Dalai Lama was one of those passengers. The captain fl ew him to a mountainside temple nestled in the Himalayas.
Beginnings at 22,000 Feet
However, Capt. Maden did not always fl y the well healed and lustrous to business sites and holy shrines. Rather, he fi rst obtained his initial fl ight instruction in military school, after demonstrating an aptitude for English. In primary training, he obtained duel
10 July 2014
ratings in New Zealand, and still
airplane and rotorcraft commercial ratings in both that country and India.
After initial training, he
then spent 24 well-lived years in the Indian Army Aviation Corps, fl ying the fabled Aerospatiale SA-315B Llama. “The pure fun of that aircraft was absolutely amazing,” he says. “It happens to hold the world’s altitude record of 40,000-plus feet.” It also happens to hold the world’s autorotation record, accomplished after setting the altitude record when the engine fl amed out.
During his military service, Capt. Maden fl ew to outposts along the Pakistan-India border, an area with one of the longest disputes in the history of modern governments. Since 1947, when India and Pakistan became independent of British rule, the Kashmir confl ict has seen three
currently holds
wars and numerous fi ghts. In 2001, he would see small arms fi re diminish down below him. He recalls, “They could never quite reach us with their fi rearms; it was just too high for them.”
Passion Maintains Youth
Many times he fl ew supplies to mountain border posts. After landing, some of these outposts
required
climbing—or even scaling a small distance—to complete delivery. Thus, the captain developed a pas- sion for rock climbing. To this day he still climbs for fun to feed this pas- sion. “Do what you love and you will live longer,” is one of his mantras. It seems to work.
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