Air Sahara is an airline based in New Delhi, India. It is a privately owned airline operating scheduled services connecting all metropolitan centres in India. The airline also provides helicopters which are available for charter services and aerial photography. Its main base is Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi, with hubs at Begumpet Airport, Hyderabad, Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport, Mumbai, Chennai International Airport, Chennai and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport, Kolkata. The uncertainty over the airline’s fare has caused its share of the domestic Indian air transport market, from approximately 11% in January 2006 to a reported 8.5% in April.

Founded: 1991
Hubs: Indira Gandhi International Airport
Focus cities / secondary hubs: Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Bangalore
Fleet size: 26
Destinations: 26
Parent company: Sahara Airlines
Headquarters: New Delhi
Key people: Subrata Roy(founder and owner), Alok Sharma (President)
Website: http://www.airsahara.net

History

The airline was established on 20 September 1991 and began operations on 3 December 1993 with two Boeing 737-200 aircraft as Sahara Airlines. Initially services were primarily concentrated in the northern sectors of India, keeping Delhi as its base, and then operations were extended to cover all the country. Sahara Airlines was rebranded as Air Sahara on 2 October 2000, although Sahara Airlines remains the carrier’s registered name. On 22 March 2004 it became an international carrier with the start of flights from Chennai to Colombo. It is part of the major Sahara India Pariwar business conglomerate.

Proposed Jet Airways takeover and aftermath

On January 19, 2006 Jet Airways announced that it was to buy Air Sahara for $500 million in an all-cash deal. Everything, including Sahara’s assets and infrastructure would belong to Jet Airways. This deal would have been the biggest in India’s aviation history and the resulting airline the country’s largest, had it gone through. Jet Airways management had planned to rename Air Sahara to “Trans Jet”, with a separate corporate logo and livery.

The Indian Government had initially expressed its doubts on whether such a deal was legal, since no such deal had previously taken place in Indian Civil Aviation. However the Indian Civil Aviation Ministry ultimately gave approval in principle for the deal.

Market reaction to the deal was mixed, with many analysts suggesting that Jet Airways was paying too much for Air Sahara. The deadline for the deal to be completed was June 21, 2006, but in the days before this, the chances of the takeover being completed began to look shakier. Jet Airways claimed that a final sticking point was the government’s delay in giving Jet chairman Naresh Goyal approval to be apointed to the Air Sahara board. Air Sahara countered that Jet Airways had engineered this impasse by delaying the request for such approval, as a way of extricating themselves from a deal they now regretted. Jet was said to be willing to go ahead with the deal only if the originally agreed price was lowered by 20-25% on the basis of Sahara’s mounting debts, an option which was firmly rejected by Air Sahara. Finally both sides confirmed that the deal was off. Following the failure of the deal, the companies have now filed lawsuits seeking damages from each other.

Services

Air Sahara operates the following services (as of December 2005):

* Domestic scheduled destinations: Ahmedabad, Allahabad, Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Coimbatore, New Delhi, Dibrugarh, Goa, Gorakhpur, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kochi, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Patna, Pune, Ranchi, Srinagar, Varanasi and Visakhapatnam.
* International scheduled destinations: Colombo, Kathmandu, Durban, Singapore and London Heathrow.
* Helicopter charter services are operated between Delhi and Mumbai.
* Flights to Bangkok, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, and Seoul are planned.

Fleet

The Air Sahara fleet consisted of the following aircraft (at January 2005):

* 1 Boeing 767-300
* 8 Boeing 737-700
* 3 Boeing 737-800
* 5 Boeing 737-400
* 3 Boeing 737-300
* 3 Bombardier CRJ-200ER
* 4 Bombardier CRJ-200LR

Total - 27

Air Sahara average fleet age is 6.5 years old in june 2006.

The airlines also operates Helicopters on non-scheduled routes.

* 3 Ecureuil Helicopter
* 1 Dauphin Helicopter

Following approval to begin long-haul services to London, Air Sahara had considered acquiring three Airbus A310 aircraft from Singapore Airlines