Jamair was an Indian aviation company that operated in the mid-twentieth century. It was among the early private air operators based in Calcutta (now Kolkata), West Bengal, and was active during a formative period of civil aviation in India, before the nationalisation of scheduled air services in 1953.
| Name | Jamair |
|---|---|
| Type | Aviation company |
| Country | India |
| Headquarters | Calcutta (Kolkata), West Bengal |
| Sector | Civil aviation |
In the years following independence, India had a number of small private airlines and air operators that ran scheduled, charter and freight services across the subcontinent. Calcutta, with Dum Dum Airport as a major hub for eastern India and a gateway towards South-East Asia, hosted several such operators. Jamair was one of these Calcutta-based operators.
The company was associated primarily with charter and non-scheduled flying services, including freight and passenger work. Operators of this kind in the period commonly used surplus piston-engined aircraft of Second World War vintage, such as the Douglas DC-3 (Dakota), which were widely available and suited to the airfields and cargo demands of the era.
The Air Corporations Act, 1953 nationalised scheduled air transport in India, merging the major scheduled carriers into Air India for international services and Indian Airlines for domestic services. Non-scheduled and charter operators continued to function outside this framework, and the segment in which Jamair was active represented this lesser-known but commercially important strand of Indian aviation history.
Jamair forms part of the broader record of small and mid-sized Indian aviation enterprises that operated alongside the larger scheduled airlines of the early post-independence period. Such firms played a role in air freight movement, charter passenger work, and the development of aviation infrastructure and personnel in eastern India.