The operational merger with Air India will be concluded by mid-2025 after securing all regulatory clearances, the airline’s CEO Vinod Kannan said on Monday. As per the procedures, most of the legal approvals would be secured by the first half of 2024, after which several integration processes will be conducted to have a single brand.
Kannan spoke to the media on the occasion of Vistara completing its 9 years of operations. He said that a couple of regulatory clearances are still awaited for the merger to be completed. But timeline-wise they are on track.
According to him, the NCLT (National Company Law Tribunal) will hold the second hearing for the merger in February, followed by the clearances from Ministry of Civil Aviation and the DGCA.
Besides, clearance on foreign investment from Singapore Airlines side is awaited from the DPIIT (Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade). Last year, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) had given its approval for the merger.
On taking over the additional role of Chief Integration Officer, Kannan said: “The main role for me is to ensure that the integration, whether it is regulatory or operational, is carried out as per plan.”
“On the operational side, we do have certain regulatory requirements and approvals that need to come in. Once the operational process of integration starts, (the role) will be that of liaising with various authorities, and also looking at international jurisdiction because it is not just about domestic market. We also apply to various other countries, whether it’s slots, whether it is traffic rights.”
The airline currently has a fleet of 67 aircraft that operate over 320 daily flights, connecting 32 domestic and 18 international destinations. The Tata Group-Singapore Airlines’ full-service carrier expects to receive three more aircraft by the end of 2023–24, by which time it will have a fleet of 70 planes.
Notably, the airline plans to enhance connectivity to many of its existing international destinations. At present, Vistara has deployed 35% capacity on international segment while the rest is devoted for the domestic sector.
“Currently, we operate to 50 destinations. We now have two hubs… Delhi as well as Mumbai. So a lot of the routes that we operate, are both from Delhi and Mumbai, like Singapore, Bangkok, Dhaka and Male for example. While we may not announce too many new destinations, but there might be additional routes from Mumbai to our existing destinations,” he said.
It had around 10% domestic market share for many months now. Vistara has announced to increase the flight frequency between Mumbai and London Heathrow from 4x weekly to daily flights, starting March 1, 2024.
Additionally, Vistara will introduce a second daily flight between Mumbai and Singapore on February 1, 2024, using its A321neo aircraft. Furthermore, the airline is working to attain break even status on an annual basis. “We are definitely targeting to break even on an annual basis because we’ve been doing it off and on on a quarterly basis.”
“Right now we are fully self funded and independent without asking for any fund injection from shareholders.” The airline had reported its first profitable quarter during October-December quarter of FY23 (excluding unrealised foreign currency loss and non-operating income).