Fly91

Is Fly91 safe?

Fly91 has had no accident since it started flying in March 2024, and nothing in its short record points to a specific safety problem. We score it 75. That number is held back by what we cannot yet know: two and a half years and about 15,000 flights is too little to judge an airline on, all the aircraft are leased, and Fly91 has no confirmed IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary audit.

Fly91 is a regional airline based at Goa's new airport at Mopa. Its chief executive, Manoj Chacko, set it up to fly the routes between smaller cities where an A320 would fly half empty, using 70-seat ATR 72-600 turboprops. It received its operating certificate from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on 6 March 2024, flew a first special flight to Agatti in Lakshadweep on 12 March and began scheduled flights from Goa to Bengaluru on 18 March.

A very short record

There is no Fly91 entry in the Aviation Safety Network accident data, and India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) has published no report on one of its flights. AeroInside, which tracks incidents worldwide, lists none either.

The event that made the news was a weather diversion. On 19 April 2026, flight IC3401 from Hyderabad to Hubballi could not land because of storms. It held near Hubballi for about an hour, circling over Mundgod, Davanagere and Shivamogga, then flew to Bengaluru, where it landed safely with 22 passengers about three hours after take-off. Videos of passengers crying and praying went viral. Airport officials said the diversion was standard practice, and a holding pattern followed by a diversion is the textbook answer to a storm over a small airport. Fly91 denied there had been a technical fault.

That is a thin basis for a score. Our rules put an airline with no fatal accident but a short record in the 80–94 band. Fly91 sits near the bottom of it, below Air Astra and Akasa Air, which have flown about four years.

Leased aircraft now, 40 new ones later

Fly91 flies six ATR 72-600s, the current version of the type with a glass cockpit. All are leased. The airline says it started out dependent on the second-hand market. Its third and fourth aircraft came from the lessor TrueNoord around the turn of 2026, one of them previously flown by Danish Air Transport, and two more from Dubai Aerospace Enterprise in February 2026. Those two were brand new, delivered from ATR’s factory in Toulouse, France. Fly91 publishes no ages for the other four.

On 3 September 2026, Fly91 placed a firm order for 40 new ATR 72-600s worth about $1 billion at list prices, with deliveries from the second half of 2027 to 2032. Before then it plans to lease six to eight more used ATRs, which could take it to 12 to 14 aircraft by late 2027. Financing for the order was not yet in place in September 2026. The airline has raised about $26 million, is seeking as much again and is not yet profitable (Reuters).

Fast growth is the main thing to watch. An airline that doubles its fleet in a year needs many new captains and engineers at once. Akasa Air's 2024 training findings came during just such a growth spurt.

Oversight

Fly91 answers to the DGCA. India holds FAA Category 1FAA IASAThe US FAA's check of whether a country's aviation regulator meets ICAO standards. Category 1 means it does; Category 2 means it does not.More in the glossary and scored 85.49% in ICAO's last audit of its safety oversight in 2022. Fly91 is not an IATA member, so we cannot confirm an IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary audit, and we score its oversight 5 points below airlines such as IndiGo that hold one. The DGCA's published audit figures for 2025 covered eight scheduled airlines; Fly91 was not one of them, so there is no public count of findings against it.

Small airports, big monsoon

Fly91's 14 destinations include several difficult ones. Agatti has a short runway on a narrow coral island. Sindhudurg and Jalgaon are small airports with limited facilities, and Hubballi is exposed to the storms that caused the April diversion. From June to September, the Konkan coast around Goa and Sindhudurg gets some of India's heaviest rain.

Flying Fly91

• Expect holds and diversions in storms. On Fly91's routes, a diversion to Bengaluru or Hyderabad is the safe choice when a small airport is under a storm. Carry what you need for a few extra hours.
• Book Agatti with a spare day. The island has one runway and few flights, and weather can cancel the day's service.
• Keep your seat belt fastened in the air. Turboprops fly lower than jets, through more of the weather, and the ride over the Western Ghats in the monsoon can be rough.

How we scored it

The clean accident record (85) and a modern single-type fleet (76), a third of it factory-new, carry the score. Oversight (67) is the Indian level without a confirmed IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary audit, and serious incidents (68) stay moderate because two and a half years of flying proves little. For India's other regional airlines, see Alliance Air and Star Air.