List of Domestic Airlines in India

In the last two articles, I shared about first my brief my brief experience and top 10 Tips for domestic air travel in India. In this article, I will enlist all the major domestic airlines we have in India with a brief about each of them. In the past couple of decades, we have seen tremendous changes in the the way domestic air travel has evolved with the introduction of private airlines in India. There have been so many airlines that has come into picture offering air travel services at nominal prices and thereby making it possible for so many people in India to air travel which otherwise with such high prices was not even imaginable before. I remember the days from childhood that air travel used to be one dream dad and mom used to make me feel. Now, such a dream is quite feasible to a decent percentage of population and no longer remains such a childhood dream, of course such innocent dreams might have been replaced by some super bikes, super cars, or even iPhone 4,5,6,7 😉 …

Flying from Leh to Delhi…

All this has been made possible because of the such Low Cost Carriers which mainly focus on non-major cities of India and offer some really affordable and cheap air tickets in India. Not to forget, even introduction of various Travel portals over web has also played a bit of role in lowering the airlines fares and making it possible to average middle class man to live the air travel dream. Here, is a useful list of such Low Cost Carriers or Low Cost Airlines including others as well:

Domestic Airlines in India

Air India: It is one of the major airlines in India and a part of government which operates Airbus and Boeing serving 49 domestic destinations and 26 international destinations in 19 countries across Asia, Europe and North America. It is one of those airlines that has suffered quite major losses and positions in the aviation sector over past few years.
- Indian Airlines: Now, named Indian, after its merger with Air India, that focused primarily on domestic routes, along with several international services to neighbouring countries in Asia
- Air India Express: It is the low-cost subsidiary of Air India which mainly operates services to middle east and southeast Asia. Air India Express operates nearly 100 flights per week, mainly from southern states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala in India.
IndiGo Airlines: It is the largest low-cost carrier in India in terms of market share and is considered to be the fastest growing airlines in South Asia. It operates to 33 destinations in India and abroad with 373 flights each day.
Jet Airways: It has become on the the leading airlines, in fact second largest in India in past few years or so and operates about 400 flights daily to 73 destinations worldwide including 52 domestic destinations and 21 international destinations.
- JetLite: Established as Sahara Airlines in 1990s but was later taken over by Jet Airways in 2007 and finally, JetLite operations were also terminated and merged with JetKonnect.
- JetKonnect: It is the low-cost carrier for Jet Airways which operates services to states like Udaipur, Ahmedabad, Bhavnagar, Jodhpur, Chennai, Kochi, Vadodara, Jaipur, Amritsar, Vadodara, Madurai, Kochi, Coimbatore, Bengaluru, Mangalore, Pune, Hyderabad and Kolkata.
SpiceJet Airlines: It is another low cost carrier and is India’s third largest airline in terms of market share. Along with passenger services, SpiceJet also offers cargo services on the same flights. The service is available on flights connecting Ahmedabad, Agartala, Bagdogra, Bengaluru, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Goa, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kochi, Kolkata, Madurai, Mumbai, Pune, Visakhapatnam and a few international cities. It operates 330 flights daily to 54 (47 Indian and 7 international) destinations. And, yeah all those Ladakh lovers, SpiceJet does not fly to Leh 😉
GoAir: It is another low cost carrier operates domestic passenger services to operates to 22 destinations in India, with 105 daily flights and approximately 730 weekly flights. It does fly to Ladakh 🙂

Recently, Kingfisher Airlines was in pretty messy state and eventually got suspended but now very few of the flights have gone into operation again for Kingfisher. Apart from the above list there are also some not so popular low-cost airlines as well like Paramount, MDLR etc. which also offer airlines services at nominal prices.