Vistara’s May 2024 cuts – understanding the logic

Vistara has been impacted severely by an operations disruption towards the end of March and early April which forced it to cancel several flights on its network and combine and upguage others. This has been extensively covered in the media and acknowledged by the Vistara senior leadership which had also pledged that the problem would be under control by the end of April.

However, over the last few days, as Vistara updates its schedule beyond April, it is clear that they have cut operations further in the month of May and full normalcy looks likely only in the month of June as things stand. Towards middle March, including direct (not just non stop flights eg Delhi Dibrugarh via Bagdogra), the Vistara website listed 349-351 daily one way flights. In April, it is listing no more than 320-330 flights indicating the cut back against an original schedule of 360 flights. For May, while it continues to list 360 flights (including domestic and international operations), based on data from booking engines, it is clear that there is a sharp cut. The airline has approval for an average of 332 daily flights for Summer 2024.

While the reasons for the cutbacks are many and dwelled upon by so many, true to its name – Network Thoughts looks at where the cut back in operation is in the month of May and researches on why the airline could have cut back those specific sectors.

May is a peak month for domestic flying with summer holiday spikes. In this, the first key point is that Vistara has not cut back any international operation that it had planned originally for the month of May. The only international route cut back from March to April was the 5 weekly Mumbai London Heathrow flight, presumably because Vistara didn’t get the requisite slots at London.

In domestic operations however, the following flights have been cut

1. 2 of 17 daily Mumbai Delhi services
2. 1 of 5 daily Mumbai Hyderabad services
3. 1 of 7 daily Mumbai Bengaluru services (4 weekly)
4. 1 of 3 daily Delhi Goa Mopa services
5. 1 of 5 daily Delhi Kolkata services
6. 1 of 2 daily Delhi Indore services (on an all economy aircraft)
7. 1 of 2 daily Delhi Raipur services (on an all economy aircraft)
8. 1 of 3 daily Delhi Bhubaneswar services
9. 1 of 3 daily Bengaluru Kolkata services (recently started in March)
10. 1 of 2 daily Bengaluru Ahmedabad services (all economy, recently started)
11. 1 of 3 daily Bengaluru Kochi services (all economy, recently started)
12. 1 of 2 daily Bengaluru Thiruvananthapuram services (all economy, recently started)
13. 1 of 3 daily Bengaluru Hyderabad services (all economy)
14. 1 of 2 daily Hyderabad Goa Mopa services (all economy, recently started)
15. 1 of 3 daily Mumbai to Chandigarh (3 weekly) 
16. 1 of 3 daily Mumbai to Jaipur (3 weekly)
17. 1 of 2 daily Mumbai to Goa Mopa (4 weekly) 

This is a total of nearly 34 daily flights or more than 10% of Vistara’s domestic operation (Now down to ~261 to 264 daily flights vs the previously scheduled 294 daily flights).

Two things stand out looking at this list

1. Vistara has scaled back flights where they have multiple frequencies a day thereby ensuring that they remain relevant in that market and can also navigate cancellations with the least disruption
2. Vistara has cancelled 7 out of 81 daily departures from Delhi, 6 out of 36 at Bengaluru and 4 to 6 out of 58 daily departures at Mumbai. 
3. One would posit that the strongest metro sectors are Delhi to Bengaluru and Delhi to Hyderabad for the month of May since they have seen no cuts despite relatively higher frequency operations. A similar trend is seen in service to Ahmedabad which has not seen cuts
4. Similarly while Vistara has expanded in a large way at Bengaluru recently, given that these flights have been on sale for a month or lesser, it is not surprising that a decent number of services have been cut here given that they are likely at this stage to be marginal
5. What would have happened at the background is the check on the pilot utilisation, since removing flights in isolation does not help the main problem of the harmonisation of roster
6. In cases where selective cuts are done and not a whole rotation, it has looked at midnight landings or take-offs, averaging out the utilisation of planes and ensuring that the cuts help the rosters and not just commercial reasons
7. A look at the flights which are cut shows that international connections from top metros are maintained, which is important since Vistara has multiple interline and codeshare partnerships in addition to its own international bank of flights.

One doesn’t envy the Vistara team – having received their 70^th aircraft and having the full fleet as originally envisaged, it must be frustrating to have aircraft on ground because of operational reasons. One can only hope that the airline is able to restore its original planned schedule and indeed expand operations with its full fleet to hit “cruise altitude” in its original flight plan before it gets merged with Air India. 

About the author: This guest contributor is an aviation enthusiast whose day job is in consumer goods. A frequent flyer (1300 + flights logged) and a data geek with a love for analysing airline networks and their evolution. On X (Formerly Twitter) and other platforms as @BOMLHR

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