Mallya in Mumbai on Saturday. (AFP)

Mumbai, May 8: ?It’s the most generous birthday gift a father could give his son,? gushed Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh as he watched Vijay Mallya take the wraps off the Kingfisher Airlines’ Airbus late on Saturday in a ceremony heaving with the movers and shakers in business and politics.

?It’s a great feeling for any father,? gushed Mallya, his son Siddharth, with his hair gelled to stand upright, next to him. On Saturday, the 18-year-old was inducted on the board of UB Holdings, the company that controls McDowell Ltd, United Breweries and Kingfisher Airlines.

Sid, as his buddies call him, rubbed shoulders with the likes of Gautam Singhania, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Prasad Bidappa and Manuvraj Khosla. Four Union ministers ? Sharad Pawar, Praful Patel, Sunil Dutt and Subodh Kant Sahai ? joined airline industry captains as guests.

For Mallya, whose first flight in civil aviation in the early 90’s with two Dornier aircraft from Hindustan Aeronautics failed to take off, appeared to have moved on. ?Regretfully, the timing was not right,? Mallya sighed.

Now, of course, he would like to send his rivals into a tailspin. Air-India chief V. Thulasidas, Jet Airways CEO Wolfgang Prock-Schauer and Air Deccan boss G. R. Gopinath, watching the launch, would be fastening their seatbelts.

Pawar, whom Mallya described as his ?mentor who still treats him as a child?, picked the part of the invitation letter where the UB chief said he ?personally selected? stewardesses for Kingfisher. Maharashtra governor raved about the classless society in air. ?We’ll have only the Kingfisher class,? said Mallya, whose airline will fly from Bangalore to Delhi and Mumbai at fares more than Air Deccan’s but less than those at Jet Airways.

The bash shifted to a five-star address where Subhash Ghai, Raveena Tandon and Shilpa Shetty swapped greetings with Hital Meswani of Reliance and merchant bankers Mukesh Khanna, Udayan Bose and Ashok Wadhwa.