To put it in perspective, Airbus, the world's largest

aircraft-maker, has made only 10,000 planes so far.

The aircraft on the world tour has two Pratt & Whitney piston engines, Agullo said, adding that it has flown 74,500 hours. Engines of this make have to be changed after every 1200 hours, he said.

The DC-3 was also the first plane to complete the US east-west journey with just one stop. Out of the 16,000 DC-3 built, 10,000 were in the US, 487 in Japan and the rest in Russia.

The Breitling DC-3 World Tour will end in Geneva in September after covering 24,000 nautical miles.

Bezeley said the plane chose Nagpur for a halt because the city is at the heart of India, and also because the `aviation gas', its fuel, is not available at large airports.

On Wednesday the plane will fly off to Chittagong in Bangladesh, from where it will head to Bangkok, Singapore, Hong Kong, China and Japan.

It will be stationed in Japan for a month before heading for the west coast of the US. In Tokyo, the plane will offer a joy ride to the child victims of the 2013 tsunami.

Civil DC-3 production stopped in 1942 with 607 aircraft made. However, the production of its military derivative, the C-47 Skytrain (designated as Dakota by the UK's Royal Air Force), and the Russian and Japanese versions continued till 1950.

(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)