Jet Airways was incorporated as an "air taxi" operator on 1 April 1992. It started commercial airline operations on 5 May 1993 with a fleet of 4 Boeing 737-300 aircraft [2], with 24 daily flights serving 12 destinations.

In 1991, the late P.V. Narasimha Rao, Prime Minister of India at the time, introduced an "open skies" policy as part of India's economic liberalisation. This opened doors for privately owned "air taxi" operators to start scheduled services. Initially these "air taxis" were not allowed to publish their schedules thus putting them at a considerable economic disadvantage vis-a-vis Indian Airlines, then the monopoly provider of all domestic air transport in India.

Naresh Goyal, who already owned Jetair (Private) Limited (which provided sales and marketing for foreign airlines in India) took advantage of this opportunity by setting up Jet Airways as a full-service scheduled airline that would give competition to state-owned Indian Airlines. Indian Airlines had enjoyed a monopoly in the domestic market between 1953, when all major Indian air transport providers were nationalised under the Air Corporations Act (1953), and January 1994, when the Air Corporations Act was repealed, following which Jet Airways received scheduled airline status.

Jet Airways 45 destinations include most of the big cities in India. International destinations include Kathmandu, Colombo, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and London's Heathrow Airport and will soon start serving Bangkok, Brussels and Newark. Jet Airways was the first private airline in India to fly to international destinations. It started international operations in March 2004 between Chennai and Colombo after it had been cleared by the Government of India to operate scheduled services to international destinations.

Subsequently, a second route linking Mumbai with Colombo and a new route between Delhi and Kathmandu were added. The latter commenced in May 2004. On December 29, 2004 the Government of India decided in principle to permit privately owned Indian carriers to operate scheduled air services to any international destination world-wide (outside of Pakistan) with the exception of the Gulf countries, i.e. Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Another effect of this stipulation was that, apart from Jet Airways itself, Air Sahara was the only other privately owned Indian carrier permitted to operate international scheduled services.

Jet Airways sought to take maximum advantage of this ruling by adding new international scheduled routes to destinations within the commercially viable flying range of its growing fleet of "Next Generation" Boeing 737-700/800 series narrowbodied jets, such as Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

This first led to a decision to lease three Airbus A340-300E widebodies from South African Airways to enable it to commence non-stop flights to London Heathrow in the UK and to subsequently place a large order for a fleet of brand-new Airbus A330-200 and Boeing 777-300ER widebodied airliners to permit further expansion, especially to additional destinations in Europe and North America.

At 2006 Jet Airways has international services to Kathmandu, Colombo, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, London Heathrow, operating from Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Amritsar.

Jet Airways Airbus A340-300 waiting for take off at London Heathrow AirportJet Airways and Air Sahara were the only private airlines to survive the Indian business downturn of the early 1990s. In January 2006, Jet Airways announced that it would buy Air Sahara making it the biggest takeover in Indian aviation history. The resulting airline would have been the country's largest[3] but the deal fell through in June 2006.

Jet Airways has begun thrice-weekly operations from the north Indian city of Amritsar to London Heathrow to serve the UK's large ethnic Punjabi community. Jet Airways began serving Amritsar on August 4, 2006. This service, which was initially operated at a frequency of three flights a week, is now operated six times a week.

Jet Airways has started flying to Bangkok from Delhi and Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) effective January 23, 2007.

Jet Airways has also announced that it is going to commence a twice-weekly service from Ahmedabad to London Heathrow on April 3, 2007 to cater to the travel requirements of the ethnic Gujerati community in the UK. The new service between Ahmedabad and London is to be increased to three weekly round-trips from May 2007.

The airline is using/is going to use its recently delivered Airbus A330-200s on both the Amritsar and Ahmedabad services while "Next Generation" Boeing 737-800s equipped with winglets are used on all Bangkok sectors.

Lower wages in India compared with the West are not the only explanation for Jet Airways' relatively low cost base by international standards. The company has also been able to lower its costs by "sweating its assets", i.e. getting the maximum utilisation out of its aircraft fleet by minimising turnaround times between flights, similar to the leading European/North American low-cost, "no frills" carriers. This has partly helped it to offset the high costs of the airport infrastructure as well as jet fuel in India, which are higher in India than the international average.

It also claimed that its international operations were profitable, with the sole exception of its long-haul flights between India and London-Heathrow.

Jet Airways should be able to take maximum advantage of the greater fuel efficiency of its twin-engined fleet of A330s and B777s (compared with the A340) once these have been delivered in sufficient numbers to the airline to be deployed on its UK and other planned long-haul schedules. This will hopefully help improve those routes' financial performance barring another major spike in ATF prices.