The Vistara CEO accepted that the airline faced significant operational disruption from 31 March to 2 April. He said, “The anxiety and frustration felt by our customers was matched in even measure to the pain that all of us felt in seeing our much-loved brand drawing negative commentary from various quarters. There has been some misrepresentation pertaining to this on external forums.” Kannan reiterated that there were a multitude of reasons behind operational disruption, including ATC delays, bird hits, and maintenance activities which created a cascading effect on the network.
He also said, “We were stretched in our pilot 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.”
The Vistara CEO informed that the airline is working with the relevant teams to introduce more resilience to its operations. “We have scaled back our operations by around 25- 30 flights per day, i.e. roughly 10% of the capacity we were operating. These cancellations are mostly on our domestic network and much ahead of time to minimise inconvenience to customers. Additionally, we are working on the plans for May 24 and beyond.”
While Vistara is in the process of merging with Air India, it is still continuing to increase its presence. The airline recently received its 70th aircraft a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner (7th in the fleet) marking the completion of its order book. Vistara recently started operations on the Mumbai-Paris route and also deployed the Dreamliner on the Delhi-Bali route.
Kannan is confident that Vistara will bounce back stronger. He said, “While the events of the last week may seem like a setback, the hallmark of our organization has always been that we have bounced back from tough situations and emerged stronger. I am filled with pride to share that our Customer Net Promoter Score (NPS) for April 9, 2024 reached 59- this is even higher than what we were doing prior to this large-scale disruption.”
