I’ve always known I wanted to be close to my brother. He’s my only sibling. We lived in San Diego for a few years after college, and then we moved to San Francisco in 2018.

Matine: San Francisco is amazing. It’s the most diverse environment I’ve been in, and it’s high-caliber for business, especially tech.

John: Matine was working for Walmart e-commerce and then later got a job with Apple. I was working as an attorney.

We were paying incredibly high rent but we had the best view, looking over the Pacific Ocean with the sunset in our windows each night.

But San Francisco was apocalyptic. During COVID, the streets were barren. It felt unsafe. I had my car broken into multiple times.

Matine: COVID helped us rethink and reprioritize things. Rather than work to release the next-generation iPhone, I wanted to make a new product that few people have ever heard of.

John: Beltways is really our father’s dream. Forty years ago, he was living in Istanbul and he realized today’s forms of mobility were not moving people efficiently. He thought up a modular design to make walkways 10 times faster.

My brother and I always wanted to do something together and years after our father came up with the idea, we started looking into it.

Matine: We established Beltways in July 2020. We quickly realized we had to move out of San Francisco. It would have been way too expensive to do what we needed there.

John: It wasn’t the right place for our startup. We’re a big hardware manufacturing startup. It made a lot more sense to be near industrial clusters of technology. We wanted to be in the Midwest, where there’s still viability for manufacturing.

Matine: John met someone with experience in the walkway industry and he offered us a shop out in Iowa.

We moved to Dubuque, Iowa, in 2020

John: It was a very small town in the middle of the cornfields, an hour and a half from any airport. Dubuque is a beautiful, quiet town on the Mississippi River. We could drive anywhere in town in two minutes.

We basically lived in a mansion. We had a three-story, four-bedroom place for half the price of our condo in San Francisco.

Matine: The snow was definitely a change of pace. We got our fair share of workout shoveling.

It was a different way of life. We needed to be focused and Iowa was good because we didn’t have too many distractions. The two years we spent in Iowa went by very fast.

John: We built the prototype for the world’s fastest-moving walkway while we were living there. It was a hundred-foot-long system and it got us our first VC check.

That was a big milestone for us. We put all our money into this company. We left stable jobs. We refinanced our home. There’s been nothing more fulfilling than making our father’s invention something commercial.

Matine: It was a surreal day when he came out and rode the system for the first time. It was the icing on the cake to see his excitement standing on something he thought up so many years ago.

John: We needed to start scoping out the next spot for our company. The next step was to pilot our walkway. We were invited by several airports to do a pilot demo of our system.

We knew CVG Airport in Cincinnati had a real track record of innovation and taking care of startups. The area was also advantageous for manufacturing. It’s super cheap. The facility we’re currently in is only a little more expensive than my rent in San Francisco, and this is 20,000 square feet.

We moved to Cincinnati in 2022

John: We even moved our parents out here, too. We wanted our father to work with us and be part of the company in person. Our parents live three floors below us in our building in the Mount Adams neighborhood.

Moving to Cincinnati felt like we were back in a big city after two years in Iowa. We have major sports teams and a large hub airport. It’s a much more temperate climate.

The winters have been pretty mild so far. The spring is lush and green. You can kayak down the rivers, and there are amazing trails nearby. The air quality is great. And the summers aren’t 120 degrees like they were in Arizona.

I met my partner, and now I have a child that was born here in Cincinnati. The city has become home for us. The company is here, the whole family is here.

We miss life on the coast sometimes. California is a beautiful place. We love that climate and the diversity of people. San Francisco is where tech starts and bleeds out from. It’s really the birthplace of a lot of amazing stuff.

Matine: But Cincinnati’s tech scene has also been very good to us. It’s growing. It’s a close-knit startup community. From the moment we got here, the community has been so welcoming.

John: And it’s a lot cheaper here.

Bringing our father’s dream to life has been incredible

Matine: We started Beltways in a humble garage in Tucson, where my brother built prototypes himself. Now, we’re in a 20,000-square-foot facility here in Northern Kentucky, right next to our first airport customer. And we’re US-made.

John: Our goal is to become an official partner of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics to provide temporary high-speed conveyance.

Cincinnati is a great place to raise a family and have a business. We see ourselves staying for the foreseeable future.

But our ultimate goal is to make our walkways commonplace and spread this technology around the world. So wherever we have to go to make that possible, we will. This is bigger than us.

The flight was then pushed back to 7:17pm, however, it was further delayed when a passenger fell ill, and subsequently, some other passengers also deboarded the plane.

According to a statement by an Air India spokesperson, the flight was then halted due to the night landing restrictions at the San Francisco airport and the crew flight duty limitations.

“AI-179 from Mumbai to San Francisco, scheduled to depart at 1600 hrs today, was delayed due to a technical issue arising just before departure. Giving top priority to safety issues, the aircraft was held back for engineering checks…Meanwhile, a few guests decided to discontinue the journey and the flight got further delayed as their baggage had to be offloaded from the aircraft,” the Air India’s statement read.

It added, “The flight pushed back at 1917 hours but had to ramp return due to one guest feeling unwell. While the ailing guest was being deboarded with his baggage, the night landing restrictions at SFO had set in along with the crew flight duty limitations.”

The San Franscisco-bound Air India flight will depart at 10:30am on Saturday.

The company offered passengers hotel accommodation, complimentary rescheduling, and served refreshments at the airport.

“Guests have been offered hotel accommodation, complimentary rescheduling and full refunds and served refreshments at the airport. Inconvenience caused to guests is sincerely regretted,” it said.

Meanwhile, according to reports, the passengers were stuck in the flight’s cabin for around five to six hours on Friday – before the authorities deboarded them.

Several angry passengers also took to social media to describe their horrific experience.

“Penning down the worst experience i have ever had with Air India. I had a flight, AI 179, scheduled on the 24th of May, 2024 from Mumbai to San Francisco. The flight was a total nuisance. The service post de-planing was also super chaotic…The flight had no air conditioning and we were stuck inside for good 5 hours. The in-flight service from the crew members was disappointing. 3 people passed out due to suffocation. Everyone eventually had to de-board. The pick up and drop service to the hotel was so tiring,” a passenger wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Another wrote, “What is happening in flight no AI179( Mumbai to San Francisco) , the AC is not working, the flight was supposed to start at 4:00pm and now it’s 7:09pm. There are old age people…Why the aircraft was not checked before?”

Mumbai:

Air India flight AI-179 scheduled to depart from Mumbai to San Francisco at 4 pm (local time) on Friday was delayed due to a technical issue and is now rescheduled to depart at 10:30 am on Saturday.

The flight was pushed back to 7:17 pm, however, it had to ramp return due to one passenger feeling unwell. The ailing passenger deboarded the flight, however, the night landing restrictions at SFO had set in along with the crew flight duty limitations.

In a statement, an Air India spokesperson stated, “AI-179 from Mumbai to San Francisco, scheduled to depart at 1600 hrs today, was delayed due to a technical issue arising just before departure. Giving top priority to safety issues, the aircraft was held back for engineering checks.”

“Meanwhile, a few guests decided to discontinue the journey and the flight got further delayed as their baggage had to be offloaded from the aircraft. The flight pushed back at 1917 hours but had to ramp return due to one guest feeling unwell. While the ailing guest was being deboarded with his baggage, the night landing restrictions at SFO had set in along with the crew flight duty limitations,” it added.

According to the statement, passengers were offered hotel accommodation, complimentary rescheduling, and served refreshments at the airport.

Air India spokesperson stated, “Guests have been offered hotel accommodation, complimentary rescheduling and full refunds and served refreshments at the airport. The flight has now been rescheduled at 1030 hours tomorrow (Saturday). Inconvenience caused to guests is sincerely regretted.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)