Ariana Afghan Airlines Co. Ltd. (Persian: هواپیمایی آریانا‎‎, Pashto: آريانا افغان هوايي شرکت‎), also known as Ariana, is the largest airline of Afghanistan and serves as the country's national carrier. Founded in 1955, Ariana is the oldest airline of Afghanistan. The company has its main base at Kabul International Airport, from where it operates domestically, and also provides international connections that link Afghanistan with China, Germany, India, Iran, Kuwait, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan and Turkey. The carrier is headquartered in Shāre Naw, Kabul, and it is wholly owned by the Afghan government. Ariana Afghan Airlines has been on the list of air carriers banned in the European Union since October 2006 (2006-10)^[update].

The airline was set up on 27 January 1955. It was established as Aryana Airlines with the assistance of Indamer Co. Ltd., which initially held a 49% interest, and the government of Afghanistan owned the balance. At the beginning, services were operated to Bahrain, India, Iran, and Lebanon, with a fleet of three Douglas DC-3s. In 1957, Pan American World Airways became the minor shareholder of the airline when it took over the 49% interest from Indamer. Domestic scheduled services started the same year. By April 1960 (1960-04), a fleet of three DC-3s was being used for linking Kabul with Amritsar, Delhi, Jeddah, and Karachi, as well as with some points within Afghanistan, while a single DC-4 operated the Kabul–Kandahar–Tehran–Damascus–Beirut–Ankara–Prague–Frankfurt service, so-called "Marco Polo" route. In the early 1960s, US$1,100,000 (equivalent to $9,000,000 in 2016) from US aid to Afghanistan was used to capitalise the company.

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