'Worst is behind us': Vistara CEO tells staff in newsletter

Vistara CEO Vinod Kannan said the airline's on-time performance (OTP) increased to 89% on 9 April 2024 .

Tata Group-backed Vistara has scaled back operations by around 25-30 daily flights, which make up roughly 10 percent of the capacity, and the company is working on the plans for May 24 and beyond, chief executive officer Vinod Kannan told employees in a newsletter sent on April 11.

"It has been a challenging start to the new financial year," Kannan said in the letter mentioning about disruptions faced by the airline over the last two weeks prompting it to cancel 150 flights with delays to more than 200 other flights around March 25-28.

The airline is now developing plans for May 24 and beyond, Kannan said. Vistara did not immediately respond to a request for a comment.

"I assure you that the worst is behind us, and we have already stabilised our operations, with our on-time performance (OTP) increasing to 89 percent on April 9, 2024 (second highest among all Indian airlines)," Kannan said in a letter seen by Moneycontrol.

Vistara pilots have said that they took leave to express their displeasure towards the terms of the new contract as it reduced the guaranteed minimum flying allowance from 70 hours to 40 hours, resulting in a monthly pay cut of Rs 1 lakh for First Officers.

However, Vistara has maintained that the disruptions happened due to the airline running on full capacity. "There were a multitude of reasons behind this, including ATC delays, bird hits, and maintenance activities early last month - all of which had a cascading effect on a highly optimised network," Kannan added.

"We were stretched in our pilot rosters and there was not enough resilience to withstand injects that we would otherwise have weathered. We could and should have planned better, and this has been a learning experience for us which we will review thoroughly," he said.