New Delhi: Vistara’s functioning has now stabilised following “severe” flight disruption in the last few weeks, its chief executive officer told employees Thursday, with the airline reducing operations by 10 percent and managing to increase its on-time performance to 89 percent.
In an internal message to employees, accessed by ThePrint, CEO Vinod Kannan assured employees that the “worst is behind us”. He also said the airline had taken delivery of its 70th aircraft — its seventh Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner — which marked the completion of its current order book.
“It has been a challenging start to the new financial year,” Kannan wrote. “As you are no doubt aware, we faced significant operational disruption from 31 March to 2 April… I assure you that the worst is behind us, and we have already stabilised our operations, with our on-time performance (OTP) increasing to 89 percent on April 9, 2024 (second highest among all Indian airlines).”
Vistara has now scaled back by around 25 to 30 flights per day, or roughly 10 percent of the capacity it operates, he added. These cancellations, Kannan said, were mostly in the domestic network and were planned ahead of time to minimise inconvenience to customers.
A key reason for flight disruptions was crew unavailability, with several pilots taking sick leave, which industry sources said was a form of protest against the new pay structure implemented by the airline.
Kannan added that there was “some misrepresentation pertaining to flight disruption on external forums”, suggesting that not all disruptions were because of pilot shortage.
“There were a multitude of reasons behind this, including ATC (Air Traffic Control) delays, bird hits, and maintenance activities early last month, all of which had a cascading effect on a highly optimised network,” Kannan wrote.
The airline has also maintained that many pilots take their sick leaves in March, before they lapse at the end of the financial year.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
Also read: Disgruntled pilots are a sign of worry. Vistara should fix HR before resuming operations
