By Rohit Vaid
Tata Group-Singapore Airlines’ full-service carrier Vistara will increase its international capacity from the current 25% to 40% by the end of 2024, CEO Vinod Kannan told FE.
“We have close to 25% of our capacity deployed on international routes and 75% within the country. As we continue strengthening our network and with more aircraft joining the fleet soon, we hope to increase the share of international operations to 40% by the end of next year,” Kannan said.
“In 2022, we added seven additional routes including three new destinations – Jeddah, Abu Dhabi and Muscat,” he said. In 2023, the airline started operations to Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
Currently, Vistara operates to and from 14 international destinations, including Abu Dhabi, Bangkok, Colombo, Dammam, Dhaka, Dubai, Frankfurt, Jeddah, Kathmandu, London Heathrow, Male, Muscat, Paris and Singapore.
The airline will commence services to Mauritius, starting from March 26, 2023.“We continue to witness consistent growth in passenger traffic on our long-haul routes to London, Paris and Frankfurt. This had positively contributed to the bottom line,” Kannan said.
He said that the airline will make a net addition of around 14 more aircraft, which will be a mix of narrow-body and wide-body, to have a fleet of nearly 70 aircraft by the end of 2024.
A key addition to the fleet will be Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft. At present, Vistara has three aircraft of this variant, of which one was taken on lease last year. “We expect to have four more of these wide-body aircraft by 2024, taking its total count in our fleet to seven,” Kannan said.
He said that the airline will utilise the upcoming Dreamliner aircraft to further bolster its presence in Europe by increasing frequencies on existing routes, connecting to more Indian airports.
According to Kannan, the operating environment for the entire year 2022, especially the October-December quarter, had been “quite strong” for the industry and witnessed robust demand despite higher fares. “High and sustained traffic, majorly due to the festive and holiday season, led to encouraging load factors throughout the period,” he said.At present, the airline operates over 270 flights a day with a fleet of 56 aircraft. It has flown close to 11 million passengers in 2022.
As is known, Vistara reported a profit for the first time since its inception during the October-December quarter. Though the airline did not disclose the exact profit figure, it said it crossed the $1 billion revenue mark and remained Ebitda positive in the current fiscal.