Vayudoot

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Vayudoot was an airline in India established in January, 1981 as a subsidiary of Air India and Indian Airlines. This airline was originally conceived to serve the north-east region of India where the surface transport facilities were inadequate and surface routes were circuituous.

Subsequently,the services of Vayudoot had been extended to other regions also, charting 100 stations in the country. This had adversely affected its financial performance. After a review, the number of stations on the operational network was brought down to 48 on 31st March 1991. The Airline Managing Director Harshvardhan noted that Vayudoot was concentrating on consolidation of its operations and rationalisation of its fare structure rather than embark on large scale expansion of its network. Its operations were restricted to North-Eastern region and other inaccessible areas.

The airline had three crashes in its operational history, amounting to 45 fatalities^[1]

Vayudoot had a fleet of eight Dornier aircraft, eight Avro and one Fokker aircraft; Vayudoot also had an Agro Aviation Division which was involved in aerial spraying operations, seeding and afforestation operations. It had a fleet of one helicopter and sixteen aircrafts. Vayudoot's financial performance was not satisfactory which finally led to its dissolution and merger of its assets into Indian Airlines.