Air Sahara

Air Sahara is one of India�s leading private airlines. It is part of the multi-Crore 'Sahara India Pariwar' business conglomerate. Air Sahara was established on September 20, 1991. It began its operations on December 3, 1993, with a fleet of two Boeing 737-200 aircrafts. It was then known as Sahara Airlines. Initially, the operations were concentrated on the northern parts of India, but soon spread to other parts of the country as well. Sahara Airlines was re-branded as 'Air Sahara' on October 2, 2000. On March 22, 2004, Air Sahara became an international carrier with the start of flights from Chennai to Colombo.

Jet Airways, a private player in India, announced its attempt to takeover Air Sahara, on January 19, 2006. However, due to certain disagreements about the pricing - JetLite was paying too much for Air Sahara - the deal was called off. Nonetheless, the second attempt, made on April 12, 2007, wasn't unnoticed. Jet Airways agreed to pay a whopping Rs 1450 Crore to Air Sahara, for the takeover deal. Eventually, Air Sahara was taken over by Jet Airways and thus, JetLite (previously known as Air Sahara) was born on April 16, 2007. The takeover deal was officially completed after four days, on April 20.

In the present time, JetLite has been positioned as a value carrier, offering attractive air fares to its passengers. Over the years, JetLite has managed to form a clientele from not only the elite section of the society, but also from the middle class people. In order to compete with full service carriers operating in the sector, Jet Airways withdrew from many of its routes, to pave way for JetLite operations. Currently, JetLite has five aircrafts, covering as many as 27 destinations across India. The JetLite aircrafts are Boeing 737-300, Boeing 737-400, Boeing 737-700, Boeing 737-800 and Bombardier CRJ-200ER.

The domestic destinations covered by JetLite include metro cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Bangalore as well as regional destinations including Srinagar, Allahabad, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Coimbatore, Pune, Nagpur, Jaipur, Bhubaneshwar, Imphal, Gorakhpur, Ranchi, Dibrugarh, Guwahati, Jorhat, Raipur, Ahmedabad, Goa, Port Blair, Kochi, Kozhikode, Indore and Aurangabad. The international destinations covered by the airlines include Colombo and Kathmandu.