Vayudoot

Vayudoot ("messenger who rides on the wind") was a regional airline in India established on 20 January 1981 as a joint-venture between the two state-owned carriers, Indian Airlines and Air India. The airline was headquartered at New Delhi's Safdarjung Airport.

The airline was originally conceived to serve the Northeastern region of India where the surface transport facilities were inadequate and surface routes were circuitous. The regional hub for the Northeast Region was Calcutta (Kolkata) and the airline built up operations to close to 30 destinations in this challenging area. Many of the airfields saw the resumption civil flights and fixed-wing aircraft after a gap of many decades.

The airline consistently lost money since its formation. The Government, struggling to find a solution to Vayudoot's continuing financial problems, considered closure and privatisation as options as the carrier's route and fleet structure made the operation unprofitable.

History

In the late 1970s, the Government of India and its two airlines became aware of the increasing number of potential air travellers in many small towns around the nation. Vayudoot was started to expand India's domestic air transport network on a very large scale, with a completely new network designed to feed Indian Airlines' network at state capitals and other big cities. hence all Vayudoot destinations (apart from its hubs) were completely new, not covered by existing Indian Airlines services.