- Muhammad Fayyaz realised his childhood dream of building his own plane
- It cost him just £500 to build and it is made using sack-cloth and bits of rickshaw
- Mr Fayyaz’s stunning work has been commended by the Pakistani Airforce
A Pakistani popcorn seller has built his own plane using sack-cloth and bits of a rickshaw – for just £500.
Muhammad Fayyaz saved everything he could by working as a popcorn seller and a security guard, in order to realise his childhood dream and build a plane.
Remarkably, Mr Fayyaz, who lives in the village of Arifwala, learned to build his fantastic flying machine by mainly viewing TV clips and looking at online blueprints.
The plane is made from everything you wouldn’t imagine an aircraft to be made from such as a roadcutter engine, wings constructed of burlap, and wheels taken from a rickshaw.
His stunning work has caught the attention of the country’s air force whose representatives have now visited him multiple times and even issued a certificate to commend his work.
Speaking of his first flight, Mr Fayyaz said: ‘I was literally in the air. I couldn’t feel anything else.’
Visitors have flocked to see Mr Fayyaz’s unique creation, which now sits in the empty courtyard of his three-room home in the village of Tabur in central Punjab province.
Mr Fayyaz, 32, dreamed of joining the air force as a child, but his father died while he was in still in school, forcing him to drop out at the eighth grade and do odd jobs to feed his mother and his five younger siblings.
He was inspired to make his plane by watching episodes of the National Geographic Channel’s Air Crash Investigation for insight into thrust, air pressure, torque and propulsion.
He looked at blueprints online thanks to cheap internet cafe in a nearby city, with Mr Fayyaz claiming he spliced blueprints of planes he found online for his own creation.
He also sold a piece of family land, and took out a 50,000 rupee ($350) loan from a micro-finance NGO, which he is still paying off.
He used his meagre funds creatively, buying burlap sacks wholesale and persuading a kind workshop employee who had seen him scouting for materials to build him a propeller.
Building the propeller was very much a trial and error process.
Some equipment needed to be replaced, designs had to be altered, the wiring had to be reworked.
And while he was throwing himself into making sure his design worked his family worried he was obsessed.
‘I kept telling him to stop. I kept telling him to concentrate on his family and work, he was being crazy over nothing. But he didn’t listen to a single word,’ his mother, Mumtaz Bibi, recalled.
But Mr Fayyaz kept going. And, at the end of it all produced a plane — tiny, fragile, and painted a bright blue.
In February this year, he said, after more than two years of ridicule, he was ready.
Fayyaz claims his friends helped him to block a small road which he used as a runway for that first flight attempt in February.
The plane reached 120kph before taking off, Ameer Hussain, a witness who claims to have ridden alongside the plane in a motorcycle, told AFP.
‘It was between two and two and half feet off the ground,’ he said. ‘It flew for about two to three kilometres before landing.’
AFP has been unable to verify the claim.
But the attempt made Fayyaz bold enough to want to try again in front of the rest of his village, many of whom had mocked his efforts.
He picked March 23, Pakistan Day, for the unveiling. Police said hundreds of people crowded around his tiny plane, many clutching national flags.
But before Fayyaz could even start the engine, the police arrived and arrested him, confiscating his plane.
‘I felt as though I had committed one of the worst acts in the world, as though I am the worst person in Pakistan,’ he explained, adding: ‘I had been locked up with criminals.’
The court released him with a 3,000 rupees (£13) fine.
When AFP visited the local police station, officers said they had arrested Mr Fayyaz as his plane was a safety threat.
Officer Zafar Iqbal explained: ‘The plane was returned to him as a goodwill gesture. Should he obtain a flying license or permit, he is free to fly.’
Fayyaz’s misfortune resulted in social media fame, and he was called a ‘hero’ and an ‘inspiration’ by some netizens.
Representatives from the Pakistan Air Force have made two visits to view the plane and the commander of a nearby base issued him a certificate which praises his ‘passion and dexterity’ in building what it described as a ‘mini basic airplane’.
In 2012 a Pakistani engineer claimed that he had invented a car that could run on water – but this was later debunked by scientists.
