subject: Indian Airlines The Quality Air Service Providers [print this page] Indian Airlines, one of the major airlines in India based in Mumbai, came into existence with the enactment of the Air Corporations Act of 1953. It started with a fleet of 99 aircrafts and was the result of a merger between seven former independent airlines including Himalayan Aviation, Kalinga Airlines, Indian National Airways, Deccan Airways, Airways-India, Bharat Airways and Air Services of India. In 1964, it moved into the jet era with the introduction of the Caravelle aircraft into its fleet.
This airline was affected after the liberalization of the Indian economy in the 1990s by the private airlines like Jet Airways, Air Sahara. Also with the advent of low cost airlines like Spice Jet , Air Deccan , etc the aviation scenario in India was changing considerably. It was only on the 15th of July, 2007 that Indian Airlines merged with Air India and started working as a single entity. This new airline which was named Air India also belonged to the largest airline alliance namely Star Alliance .The consumer has emerged as the winner because of this merger as the new airline has an improved frequent flier programs to global destinations and offers excellent services.
The transport network of Indian Airlines spans from Kuwait in the west to Singapore in the east and covers 76 destinations out of which 58 are in India and the rest are abroad. The Indian destinations include Leh, Ranchi, Srinagar, Bangalore, Cochin, Mangalore, Kozhikode, Thiruvanthapuram, Aurangabad, Indore, Nagpur, Mumbai, Pune, Imphal, Amritsar, Jaipur, Bhubaneshwar, Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, , Agartala, Tiruchirapalli, Lucknow, Varanasi, Kanpur, Kolkata Bagdogra, Port Blair, Gaya, Car Nicobar, Hyderabad, Puttaparthi, Tirupathi, Dibrugarh, Silchar, Guwahati, Patna, Chandigarh, Raipur, Goa, Ahmedabad, Bhuj, New Delhi, Jamnagar, Surat, Vadodara and Jammu. The foreign network includes Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Myanmar in South East Asia , Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, UAE, Qatar and Bahrain in West Asia; Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Maldives in the South Asia sub-continent.
The Indian Airlines flights flies across all places at convenient times. The earliest flight is at 6.00am while the last flight is at about 9.00 pm. This airline also offers excellent services and the in-flight meals, usually multi-cuisine, are sumptuous and are catered by reputed hotel chains. This airline constantly reinvents itself by offering new packages and schemes so that all its customers benefit from them. It also offers special discounts for senior citizens whose fare is half the basic fare.
