If you’re travelling to different cities in India, it would be best to travel by plane to help save time. The question is, which Indian airline is the best?

Kingfisher, Deccan, and Go Air are very small airlines and you will rarely see flight offerings from them. So let’s concentrate on the big 4 – IndiGo, Spice Jet, Air India, and Jet Airways.

According to every Indian person I’ve spoken to the order from best to worst airline is as follows:

1) IndiGo
2) Jet Airways (sometimes known as JetKonnect)
3) Spice Jet
4) Air India

IndiGo is the best airline because it is apparently always on time. I never sat on an IndiGo flight so I’m pretty unbiased. However, my friends had a nightmare experience on IndiGo where they weren’t told there was a layover in Chennai on a flight from Pune to Hyderabad. It didn’t make for the most pleasant experience as you can imagine…

Jet Airways/JetKonnect follows IndiGo. I’ve taken this airline several times and I can definitely say that it is very dependable. There was only one instance when we were seriously delayed by a little over an hour. Otherwise, flights have been smooth and I have no complaints.

Spice Jet was a bit of a nightmare experience for me. I had originally booked a 6am flight from Delhi to Hyderabad. We didn’t leave until 9:15am. It was painful, particularly because the last hour was spent sitting in the plane on the runway. According to the pilot on SpiceJet, we couldn’t leave on time due to weather conditions (word to the wise – if you’re EVER travelling from Delhi during the winter, don’t book early morning flights as they are often delayed due to heavy fog). However, IndiGo (which had a flight at 7am) left on time. Hmmm….

Everyone told me that Air India is by far the worst airline in India because it’s never on time and has horrible service. So, does it come as any surprise that my flight on Air India was perfect? I was on the 6am flight from Kochin to Delhi. It left on time, came with breakfast and in-flight movies, had nice flight attendants, and was altogether lovely. How’s that for irony?

In conclusion, if booking domestic flights in India I would probably say, when in doubt, use JetAirways. While it wasn’t anything outstanding, I think everyone appreciates a little bit of dependability. Otherwise, I might give IndiGo a go. If most locals say it’s good, it probably is.