90s animated cartoon with flying cities

Question

Growing up in India in the 90s, we had a very limited number of cartoons (except for Cartoon Network) and I have the vague recollection of an old cartoon which was airing, maybe around 1995.

It had flying cities, or at least one city that was flying. There were also, according to my very faded memory, fighter planes or the like.
I wish I had more to go on, but there's very little. I remember because I found notes I'd scribbled down years ago about how to design the perfect flying city, and I've referenced the show. And I have no idea what it is. Early 90s, flying city. Unfortunately, that's all I have to go on.

I imagine it was animated in the mid 80s to early 90s, given the quality of animation.

Does anyone have any idea what it was? For the longest time I thought it was Robotech, but it turns out it's not.

Answer 1

Also mentioned in comments by @StanleyWebb - is the first thing that came to mind:

Laputa aka Castle in the Sky:

It had flying cities, or at least one city that was flying.

The main flying city is the last one, hidden in clouds. The intro sequence shows that there were once many more flying cities before the world changed.

There were also, according to my very faded memory, fighter planes or the like.

Lots of flying aircraft, and the intro sequence had very many different types of flying aircraft. The smaller fluttering aircraft might be considered fighter planes.

I imagine it was animated in the mid 80s to early 90s, given the quality of animation.

Released in 1986

Answer 2

Ring Raiders?

This was an 80s TV show based on a toy line. The focus was around squadrons of pilots collected from across time, with the Ring Raiders being the good guys and Skull Squadron as the baddies.

Both sides base themselves out of flying aircraft carriers.

Answer 3

Could this be Macross 7?

The series originally aired in Japan from 1994 to 1995, so it (more or less) fits your time interval.

There is definitely something that could be described as a "flying city". Quoting from the linked Wikipedia page:

a spacecraft called Macross 7 leads the 37th colonial fleet on a colonization mission into deep space. [...]
The fleet's flagship is the Macross 7, which is actually composed of two parts: Battle 7 and City 7. [...] The much larger back section of the two part ship is known as City 7 and is the main civilian population center of the fleet, containing a population in excess of one million people.

This being a Macross series, it features Valkyries: a Valkyrie is a transformable aircraft that has a "fighter mode" similar to a jet fighter, a "battroid mode" like a classic humanoid mecha, and a "gerwalk mode" similar to a fighter plane with legs and arms.

Macross 7 is the sequel to Super Dimension Fortress Macross, which was one of the anime series edited together to create Robotech: so this would explain your identification hypothesis too.

(the first seconds of the video show the flying city, the protagonist's red Valkyrie appears later)

Answer 4

One cartoon might be "Dragon Flyz'.

Set post semi-apocalypse where Earth surface is uninhabitable due to some nuclear/catastrophic event; flying cities and dragons are used for transportation/warfare. Unlike most post apocalypse fiction technology is advanced, food/shelter fairly abundant albeit controlled.