The former national carrier was a few months back was sold to the Tata Group as the loss-making airline was getting difficult to operate by the Government of India. Tata Group emerged as the highest bidder amongst the others. Recently, a day after Republic Day, Tata Group formally took over the operations of Air India from the Government of India. Some of you may not know but Air India was officially launched by the Tata Group way back in 1932. JRD Tata who is known as the father of civil aviation in India was the founder of Tata Airlines. He was the first pilot of India and operated the maiden flight of Tata Airlines from Karachi to Bombay. On Sunday the Tata group shared an interesting story about how Tata Airlines’ name was changed to Air India. In 1946 when Tata Airlines was expanded from Tata Sons., ‘Air India’ was unanimously chosen as the new name of the airline in an opinion poll among Tata employees out of the four options "The choice for India's first airline company came down to Indian Airlines, Pan-Indian Airlines, Trans-Indian Airlines & Air India." Tata Group said on Sunday. The airline later went on to be nationalized in 1953.