National carrier Indian has been voted the most preferred airline of Indian expatriates living in the UAE, according to an opinion poll.

The airline received the 'Emirates Post Business Excellence Award' for winning more votes than Air-India, Emirates Airlines and Air Arabia in the poll conducted by Emirates Post.

"Indian has had an eventful ride in its Gulf operations. It started flying to the UAE with two flights a week to Sharjah in 1992. The operations have grown to 125 to the Gulf, 85 flights of them to UAE," Abhay Pathak, regional manager of Indian said after receiving the award here recently.

Thousands of respondents who cast their votes for their favourite products in 11 categories picked Indian, formerly known as Indian Airlines, as their favourite carrier.

Voting for the awards started on April 1 and an average of 1,200 votes were received per day through SMS and e-mails.

The endeavour of the poll conducted by the UAE's postal department was to understand customer choice in various categories.