Vistara’s CEO, Vinod Kannan, said on Friday that the airline anticipates its operations to return to normal by May and attributed the disruptions primarily to pilot rostering issues, which are currently being addressed, PTI reported.
He also mentioned that the airline is reviewing and discussing the concerns raised by the pilots.
Vistara had to cancel numerous flights earlier this week due to pilot unavailability. Additionally, to stabilize the situation, the airline has temporarily reduced overall flight operations. Between April 1 and April 3, the airline canceled over 125 flights.
In an exclusive interview with PTI on Friday, Kannan assured that the need to cancel flights on short notice wouldn’t happen after this weekend, as the buffer situation for pilots is stabilizing.
“It might be a reduced schedule… we are back to normal as far as the flights that are operating… the need to cancel flights at short notice will not happen after this weekend,” he said.
According to him, the situation regarding available pilots is stabilising, and there’s no need for concern regarding last-minute flight cancellations.
From Monday, all flights in the system should be operational, Kannan stated, reassuring travelers that there will be no last-minute cancellations.
Kannan stated that the airline has decreased its daily flights by 20-25 as part of the reduced operations.
In the ongoing summer schedule, Vistara is to operate more than 300 flights daily. However, the airline had to cancel some flights on Friday.
Kannan stated that they are presently working on the schedule for May, aiming to optimize it to return to their usual operations. They anticipate normal operations by May.
Vinod Kannan added that on behalf of all the 6,500 staff, they express sincere regret for the inconvenience caused. They are committed to swiftly resolving the situation and restoring normalcy.
Kannan emphasised that Vistara is apologizing to affected customers for the flight disruptions and reiterated that such service is not reflective of the airline’s standards.
“I don’t think there is an apology to the pilots but customers of course… It is a question of more being aware about what their feedback is, we are reviewing their concerns and will discuss it. “We have been reaching out to all customers (affected), apologise for the disruptions…,” Kannan said.
Additionally, he mentioned that the airline will persist in holding discussions with pilots to address their concerns.
Vistara, a joint venture between Singapore Airlines and Tatas, boasts a total workforce of 6,500 individuals, comprising 1,000 pilots and 2,500 cabin crew. Furthermore, the airline is currently undergoing a merger process with Air India.
What happened earlier?
During the weekend spanning March 31 to April 1, Vistara experienced several disruptions. Subsequently, earlier this week, the aviation regulator DGCA requested the airline to provide a daily report on flight cancellations and delays.
Vinod Kannan explained that from a rostering perspective, they had significantly stretched the rosters for pilots. This meant that when disruptions like bird strikes or engineering issues occurred, there wasn’t enough buffer or resilience available to address them.
From a planning perspective, he expressed that everything seemed to be in order, but there were several disruptions in early March, followed by another round towards the end of the month.
“Therefore, this caused the whole roster to go haywire… that is the main reason (for flight disruptions),” the Vistara chief said.