Full-service carrier Vistara operated 12%–15% more flights during the April–May period on a year-on-year basis despite a truncated schedule, the airline’s chief executive Vinod Kannan said on Friday. The airline had to curtail flight operations in the same period to bring in more operational resilience and flexibility.
In a message to employees on Friday, Kannan said: “As mentioned earlier, we had to adjust our network for April and May to bring in more operational resilience and flexibility. Despite this, we were still operating at 12–15% more capacity as compared to April 2023. We also clocked a strong PLF for the month of April at 85%.”
“Our OTP (on-time performance) progressively improved with the corrective measures taken, with the highest being on April 17 at 91%.”
Before April, the airline operated over 300 flights a day.
In the summer schedule, Vistara’s weekly departures had increased by over 25% on a year-on-year basis to 2,324. The airline’s international weekly departures had also increased. They were hiked by over 50% on a year-on-year basis to 184.
Vistara had scaled back operations by around 25–30 flights per day, or roughly 10% of its capacity, in April after it faced significant operational disruption from March 31 to April 2 due to several factors.
In April, Kannan said that the airline had stretched pilots’ rosters, and there was not enough resilience to withstand “injects that we would otherwise have weathered.”
“We could and should have planned better, and this has been a learning experience for us, which we will review thoroughly,” he said at that time.
Consequently, the airline decided to truncate operations to bring about resilience in the flight schedule and to provide a buffer in the pilots’ roster.
Kannan’s clarification came after sources indicated that the cancellations were triggered after a number of ‘first officers’ or co-pilots went on sick leaves. This was allegedly done in protest against the new wage agreement, which reduced the flying hours allotted to them from 70 per month to 40, entailing a significant pay cut.
Globally, pilots fly up to 80 hours a month. The need for the new contract arose due to the impending merger with Air India
However, Kannan pointed out that the cancellations were not caused by pilots’ angst over the new wage agreement since over 98% of them have signed the new contract.
