Vistara will cease to exist in its current form within nine months from now. The airline which set out to make a mark has a lot to its credit, except profits in decades of existence in Indian skies. When it began operations in 2015, two things seemed unlikely – the fall of Jet Airways and a pandemic. One became beneficial and made the airline change its business plan while the other was brutal.
The airline received its first Dreamliner aircraft just a few days to COVID lockdown. While the Air bubble flights helped the airline launch flights to London Heathrow, the delay in delivery of 787s further impacted it finally. It also deviated a bit by taking in one ex-Hainan Dreamliner which has a product which is different from the six others which it has inducted, part of its own order.
Finally, the airline has made its widebody operations Daily. Currently, its flights to London from Delhi and Denpasar from Delhi were the only daily operations for the Dreamliner. Starting today, the airline will have daily operations to Paris and Frankfurt from Mumbai, which saw frequency increase on June 16 and June 17 respectively and the airline will also operate Daily to Paris and Frankfurt from Delhi, starting yesterday and today respectively, which will massively increase the utilisation of its Dreamliner fleet.
The airline will now have seven planes and six full rotations increasing utilisation to its all time best so far.
How does the deployment look?
| Sector | Frequency | Weekly Utilisation | Weekly Cycles | Average Daily Utilisation | Average Daily Cycles |
| Delhi – London – Delhi | Daily | 124:15:00 | 14 | 17:45 | 2 |
| Delhi – Frankfurt – Delhi | Daily | 123:40:00 | 14 | 17:40 | 2 |
| Delhi – Paris – Delhi | Daily | 124:15:00 | 14 | 17:45 | 2 |
| Delhi – Denpasar – Delhi | Daily | 101:30:00 | 14 | 14:30 | 2 |
| Mumbai – Frankfurt – Mumbai | Daily | 119:35:00 | 14 | 17:05 | 2 |
| Mumbai – Paris – Mumbai | Daily | 129:30:00 | 14 | 18:30 | 2 |
| Average -> | 120:27:30 | 14 | 17:12 | 2 |
With an average utilisation of 17 hours and 12 minutes, two cycles a day – the utilisation looks perfect for any widebody, except that there is a catch. These are six rotations but seven planes. Add the seventh one to the mix and the utilisation lowers to 14 hours and 45 minutes, with an average of 12 weekly cycles and average daily cycle of 1.71 flights.
The Delhi based aircraft have an utilisation of 16 hours and 55 minutes while the Mumbai based aircraft has a higher utilisation of 17 hours and 47 minutes.
What happens to the odd dreamliner?
In October 2022, Vistara decided to induct a dreamliner from the open market. While it had six dreamliners on order, the lack of visibility on when the next one could be inducted due to Boeing’s quality issues led to the airline selectively taking one aircraft which was available. The ex-Hainan 787 is registered VT-TSQ and has a different product as compared to the standard Vistara 787.
Amongst the difference, the major one is with the premium economy where the ex-Hainan aircraft seats 36 seats in 3-3-3 as compared to 21 in 2-3-2 seating of Vistara’s original product. The seats are different with the standard economy class ones, but with more legroom. It started operations to Frankfurt and was tagged for the Delhi – Frankfurt route. It later shifted to Mumbai – Frankfurt and currently operates to Frankfurt, either from Delhi or Mumbai.
Network Thoughts
With an aircraft spare, for my learning – I will follow this plane very closely on how the airline utilises it? With seven planes, there will be a day each of maintenance for every plane. Will the non-standard plane be the spare which rotates? My measured guess will be to have this aircraft operate to Denpasar, as it is a route in isolation. Both Frankfurt and Paris have connectivity from Mumbai and Delhi, so there is product comparison and London is indeed premium. This helps the airline rotate the spare plane as a maintenance spare and deploy it on any route, including Denpasar once a week to ensure that it can pull one plane out for maintenance.
No airline sees a full utilisation of its widebody (or narrow body) fleet, but can Vistara push its spare aircraft a little more? Maybe a domestic sector (or two?). Air India has been operating the B777s on domestic routes for years together. This could well be to rotate the aircraft and uplift cargo for long haul, not something which may justify Vistara’s deployment but there remains a selective possibility.
The merger angle
Vistara will merge with Air India by March 2025, a year later than the original plan. Currently, Vistara and Air India fly nearly at identical times to Frankfurt and Paris from Delhi, while operations from Mumbai are unique for the group. The Vistara Dreamliners are way superior to Air India’s planes in terms of quality and how will Air India integrate the network needs to be seen. Under Air India, if the aircraft rotates a lot – it will be nothing short of lucky draw. Mapped to a specific network, it can pull a premium.
All eyes on the spare plane now, for my learning and for those who want to understand Network Planning and operations – keep an eye out too!
You can now order Network Thoughts baggage tags and/or book marks!
Follow NetworkThoughts on Twitter, Facebook, Telegram and YouTube.
NetworkThoughts 