Vistara Airlines on Sunday (07.04.2024) announced that they will be cancelling 10% of flights to manage the crisis of non-availability of pilots and crew. They announced that they would be cancelling flights for a “much-needed buffer”. The airline has been suffering from the crisis for the past few days and this step was used to tackle the crisis until they find a solution.
Vistara crisis
Since April 1, Vistara has cancelled more than 150 flights to tackle the pilot and crew crisis. The crisis began when the pay structure was revised ahead of the merger with Air India. The revision decreased the guaranteed pay from 70 hours to 40 hours, entailing a pay cut from Rs.80,000 to Rs.1,40,000.
Two Vistara pilots raised their opinions describing the situation similar to “bonded labourers” showing their support for the protesting pilots.
Vistara CEO Vinod Kannan said that the flight crisis was because of the flight duty time limit. In a meeting, the CEO ensured that there was more to gain from the merger with Air India.
More flight cancellations?
Vistara typically operates 350 flights daily and has 25-30 flights cancelled daily.
On Sunday the airline’s spokesperson said, “We are carefully scaling back our operations by around 25-30 flights per day, that is roughly 10 per cent of the capacity we were operating. This will take us back to the same level of flight operations as at the end of February 2024, and provide the much-needed resilience and buffer in the rosters.”
Last Friday, the airline apologized for the flight cancellation and the inconvenience caused to customers. Now several cancellations have been done before time in domestic flights to reduce inconvenience to customers.
“All the affected passengers have already been accommodated on other flights, as applicable. In line with what we had said earlier, with this, all the changes for April 2024 have been done and the situation has already gotten better with our on-time performance improving for the last few days. Looking ahead, we are hopeful of stable operations for the rest of the month and beyond,” the airline’s spokesperson noted.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has also asked the Vistara to submit a daily report regarding the cancellations and delays. Meanwhile, Vistara CEO Vinod Kannan stated that the airline hopes to stabilise operations before May and that more than 98 per cent of pilots have signed the new contract.
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