The airline was established on 20 September 1991 and began operations on 3 December 1993 with two Boeing 737-200 aircraft as Sahara Airlines. Initially services were primarity concentrated in the northern sectors of India, keeping Delhi as its base, and then operations were extended to cover all the country.
Sahara Airlines was rebranded as Air Sahara on 2 October 2000, although Sahara Airlines remains the carrier's registered name. On 22 March 2004 it became an international carrier with the start of flights from Chennai to Colombo. It is part of the major Sahara India Pariwar business conglomerate.
Air Sahara operates the following services (at January 2005): Domestic scheduled destinations: Ahmedabad, Allahabad, Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Coimbatore, New Delhi, Dibrugarh, Goa, Gorakhpur, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kochi, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Patna, Pune, Ranchi, Srinagar, Varanasi and Visakhapatnam.