Vistara scales down operations by 10% after disruptions

The Tata Group-owned Vistara, which has been struggling with flight disruptions due to crew unavailability, has scaled down its operations by around 10% or around 25-30 daily flights, the airline said on Sunday.

Vistara operates a little over 300 flights every day.

The airline on Sunday said that the scaling down of 10% flights will take them to the same operations as in February this year. “We are carefully scaling back our operations by around 25-30 flights per day, i.e. roughly 10% of the capacity we were operating. This will take us back to the same level of flight operations as at the end of February 2024, and provide the much-needed resilience and buffer in the rosters,” the airline spokesperson said.

The airline specified that only their domestic flights would be impacted due to the scaling back of operations.

“These cancellations are done mostly in our domestic network and much ahead of time to minimize inconvenience to the customers. Also, all the affected passengers have already been re- accommodated on other flights, as applicable,” he added.

The airline claimed that the situation of flight disruptions has gotten better.

“.. with this all the changes for the month of April 2024 have been done and the situation has already gotten better with our on-time performance improving for the last few days. Looking ahead, we are hopeful of stable operations for the rest of the month and beyond,” the spokesperson said.

Last week, many pilots reported sick that led to cancellation of around 150 flights from Monday, April 1 to Saturday, April 6. Looking at the urgency, the airline CEO Vinod Kannan on Wednesday had a townhall with the pilots and assured them of a better roster to have work-life balance.

On Friday, he said that flight cancellations were a result of a cascading effect of a multitude of factors. Addressing the issue of pilots refusing to sign the revised contracts that would lead to a pay cut and reduced flying hours, Kannan said that 98% of the pilots had signed the new contracts.

Vistara has been facing these issues at a time when the airline is nearing a merger with Air India.

Industry experts said that fewer flights during the summer peak travel season will mean an increase in airfares, thus burdening passengers.

Mark Martin of Martin Consulting said, “This situation will only help airfares to shoot up dramatically, also because GoFirst has shut down and around 60 aircraft of IndiGo are grounded because of Pratt and Whitney (engine) issues.”