Vistara apologises for flight cancellations, says addressing issue on war footing

New Delhi: Vistara on Friday apologised to the public after the airline cancelled a significant number of flights during the past few days.

A significant number of Vistara pilots had taken sick leave following the announcement of new salary rules, which coincided with the merger with Air India.

“We acknowledge that the recent experience of our customers fell short of the standards that we hold ourselves to and we sincerely apologise for the same,” Vistara said in a statement posted on its official X handle.

The airline said it had to cancel and delay a significant number of flights, owing to “various operational reasons” and due to “high utilisation of resources”, there was limited room to cope with contingencies.

It further said it was addressing this issue on a war footing.

Over 200 Vistara flights were affected — either cancelled or delayed — over the past two weeks.

On Tuesday, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) asked Vistara Airlines to submit daily reports about flight operations and follow the Civil Aviation Regulations (CAR).

“First and foremost, we have temporarily reduced the number of flights we operate and also deployed larger aircraft like our B787-9 DreamlinerTM and A321 neo on select domestic routes to accommodate more customers, wherever possible. Furthermore, we are reaching out to all customers affected by the delays and cancellations over the last weekend, to offer relevant refunds and compensation,” Vistara said.

The situation has already improved, with its on-time performance increasing to over 80 per cent for the last two days.

It hopes to stabilise the operations for the rest of April, 2024 by this weekend.

“We would like to assure our customers that we will live up to the Vistara experience that they have come to expect from us over the years. We thank our customers for their continued support and request for their patience as we work towards resolving this,” the airline added.