Air Kerala, Alhind Air Delay Takeoff Again

Air Kerala and Alhind Air, two private carrier projects based in Kerala, have both pushed back their launch timelines indefinitely after failing to secure aircraft and investment since receiving regulatory clearances in 2024. Air Kerala is now targeting a single ATR 72 to start with, down from three planned, while Alhind Air's managing director has moved the launch window to 2028-2030 at the earliest.

Both airlines have the paperwork. Neither has the planes.

A Story of Delays Built on Delays

Air Kerala received its NOC from India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation in 2024 and secured the airline code 'KD', standing for Kerala Dream, from IATA in May 2025. It opened its head office in Kochi in April 2025. The original plan called for three ATR 72 aircraft in the first phase, with Cochin International Airport as the hub. That plan has quietly shrunk to one aircraft, and even that single jet has not materialised because leasing firms have tightened their standards for new entrants following a string of Indian airline failures, most visibly Go First's collapse in 2023, which left lessors holding stranded aircraft for months.

Alhind Air's trajectory is almost identical. The Kozhikode-based carrier had planned to launch in late 2024, pushed to June 2025, then pushed again. A recent arbitral tribunal ruling ordering it to pay ₹5 lakh to an aviation consultancy over a contractual dispute added another complication, even if the financial amount is negligible. The managing director says the airline has not shelved the project, it is "carefully reviewing the situation" before possibly launching by 2028-2030.

Why Lessors Are the Real Gatekeeper Here

The Go First collapse changed everything for startup Indian carriers seeking aircraft leases. When Go First filed for insolvency in May 2023, international lessors spent months trying to repossess aircraft that Indian courts kept tied up in insolvency proceedings, a legal battle that cost them significant time and money and made them extremely cautious about placing aircraft with new, unproven Indian operators.

For Air Kerala and Alhind Air, both seeking ATR 72 turboprops to serve regional domestic routes and eventually Gulf corridors, this caution is a near-impenetrable wall. Lessors want financial track records, cash deposits, and operational history before handing over an aircraft. Startup airlines have none of those things by definition. The West Asia conflict made the environment even harder, fuel costs up 40-50%, investor appetite for aviation risk shrinking, and the Gulf routes that both airlines were banking on for eventual expansion suddenly looking uncertain.

What Kerala Is Actually Waiting For

The commercial logic behind both airlines has not changed. Kerala has the largest diaspora population of any Indian state relative to its size, with over 2 million Keralites working in the Gulf. The demand for affordable, frequent connections between Kerala's airports, Kochi, Kozhikode, Thiruvananthapuram — and destinations across the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait is enormous and structurally durable. That is exactly the market both airlines were designed to serve.

But market logic and launch readiness are different things. Until global conditions stabilise, leasing norms ease, and investors are willing to back aviation in a geopolitically uncertain environment, Kerala's private airline ambitions remain exactly where they have been for the past two years, cleared for takeoff, waiting for a runway that keeps moving further away.