Preparing for launch of international operations, says Vistara CEO Leslie Thng

Leslie Thng will soon complete a year as the CEO of Vistara, the Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines joint venture. “I learn something new everyday here,” says the Singapore Airlines veteran who was earlier the Chief Commercial Officer at Budget Aviation Holdings, which manages the airline’s low-cost subsidiaries Scoot and Tigerair.

While underlining the need to upgrade airport infrastructure in India, Thng is also excited by the opportunity that the domestic market provides. “The one-size-fits-all approach cannot work in India, and that’s why opportunities for everyone only multiply,” said Thng in an interview with Moneycontrol.

Apart from sharing his learning from the Indian market, the aviation professional also talks about what makes Vistara’s menu special.

Edited excerpts:

How has your experience been so far as the CEO of Vistara? What has been the biggest learning?
Without a doubt, the journey so far has been very exciting.  India is a unique market - so complex and yet full of opportunities. I learn something new every day here, but I am most inspired by how in India there’s a particular kind of emotional involvement of people in their work. This quality makes even the most daunting tasks easy and I am quite moved by it.

In my role at Vistara, I feel a great sense of pride to see how millions of travellers have made Vistara their preferred airline. Despite being a young airline with a relatively small scale and size, we have even started to be recognised globally for what we deliver. It only reflects that there is a clear need for a fine flying experience in India, and we have a lot more to do and achieve.

What was your initial impression of the Indian market when you moved to the new responsibility? Has that view evolved or changed now?
I wasn’t new to the market conditions in India when I joined Vistara, as I have always observed the way India has been opening up to the world. There’s room for everyone to grow here, whether it is a low-cost carrier or a full-service one like ourselves. There are so many segments of travellers in the country with varied preferences that diverse business models can easily coexist. The one-size-fits-all approach cannot work in India, and that’s why opportunities for everyone only multiply.

Even in my previous assignments, I had been quite upbeat about the Indian market, and that feeling only deepens now. My view has, indeed, evolved with India’s changing demographics against the backdrop of economic growth, which present challenges of different kinds every now and then, but also promise a very bright future for the aviation industry.

Despite the growth, there are infrastructure bottlenecks. As an operator, what are your biggest concerns?
While the opportunity for India’s aviation sector is massive, airport infrastructure challenges such as runway shortage, slot constraints, capacity constraints, etc. are in great need of attention. Almost all metro cities need two airports to handle the growing demand for air travel, and smaller cities need significant improvement of existing airports. This is, perhaps, the biggest issue that impedes the growth of the Indian aviation ecosystem today, for it limits possibilities for airlines and eventually all related businesses, apart from causing inconvenience to consumers. However, I am confident that there is an increased impetus on the infrastructure development by the government, that’s also taking a consultative approach to changes for the benefit of the entire ecosystem. The vision of enabling a billion passenger trips in a year is especially heartening and makes us quite hopeful.

You now have 22 destinations in your network. What are your plans for the rest of the year?
We will receive our 22nd aircraft soon, and we plan to add flights on existing routes to further strengthen our network this year. At the moment, we are preparing for the launch of our international operations, which we aim to start before the end of this year to destinations within the range of our Airbus A320neo aircraft.

Everyone seems to be vary of crude oil prices, with margins squeezing. How do you see the year panning out?
Our operating costs have increased with higher fuel price. In a market like India this becomes even more challenging, considering that the cost of doing business in India is quite high. At Vistara, we will continue to be vigilant and nimble.

It was only recently that I got to fly Vistara for the first time. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of food. How do you ensure this? What is the kind of engagement that you have with your suppliers?At Vistara, we are focused on offering a fine-dining experience in the skies to our customers. It starts from brainstorming sessions with our catering partner TajSATS to curate our inflight meal menu, followed by food sampling sessions that involve a cross-functional team from Vistara. Several factors are considered while putting the menu together, whether it is global trends in the culinary world, the season or evolving preferences and eating habits of people, among other things.

Once the menu is finalised, it goes through four cycles of rotation and each cycle is repeated after six days. This ensures a unique gastronomical experience every time one flies Vistara, especially our frequent flyers.

We try to pre-empt what our customers would like on a flight. For instance, on an early morning flight from Delhi to Mumbai, Vistara understands that most of the customers would be travelling for work, so the airline makes sure that the meal is light and such that it makes our customers arrive feeling fresh for the rest of the day. Similarly, flights serving dinner usually have passengers who have had a rushed day, many of who generally catch flights skipping more than one meal. We make sure that the dinner tray is sumptuous, filling yet healthy, so our customers don’t have to get back home feeling hungry. The introduction of regional delicacies has also worked very well for us, as we also uplift food on flights from regional kitchens of TajSATS including Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kochi, apart from Delhi and Mumbai.