At the stroke of midnight hour when the date moved to November 12th, Vistara went into a sunset, being absorbed by Air India. This was part of the mega merger by Tata group along with 25.1% stake by Singapore Airlines, the original promoters of Vistara or TATA-SIA airlines. The much loved airline pioneered the premium economy in India, though it had to cut back on its premium positioning by reconfiguring its planes, not once but twice. As the curtains were drawn, the airline had won accolades formally and informally, received praise by passengers during good times and brickbats during bad. If there is one thing which remained elusive for Vistara, it was profits.
As the page turns on the year and Vistara firmly in the Air India fold, its matter of time before the Vistara livery disappears and so does the branding. As it happens, just how many flights did the airline clock? How many passengers flew the airline? Here is the look. Data for this has been sourced from the regulator’s website collating it for every month and year since 2015, when the airline began operations.
In its 3599 days operations, the airline operated 539,499 flights. Out of these, 92.38% flights or 498, 376 flights were domestic while 36025 (6.68%) were international. Since the pandemic saw scheduled international flights being suspended, airlines operated under the air bubble arrangement and the flights were categorised as non-scheduled. Vistara’s non-scheduled count went up on the international side as a result and it operated 4718 international non-scheduled flights in its lifetime, with the highest being in 2021 when it saw 2423 non-scheduled international departures, while scheduled international departures remained zero. In its lifetime, it operated only 380 domestic non-scheduled flights / charters, some of which were for Air India Express to help tide over the crew crisis last year.
The airline ferried 7.5 crore passengers or 75 million passengers. It ended its journey with 7,50,61,834; many of which were repeat customers. Of these 91.7% or 6,88,30,150 were domestic; while 7.5% or 56,23,923 were on scheduled international flights. The remaining nearly 1% were on non-scheduled flights.
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Tail Note
A few weeks before Vistara merged into Air India, AIX Connect (erstwhile AirAsia India) merged into Air India Express. That merger hardly evoked any emotions like what Vistara’s merger did. While Vistara had become the poster boy, AirAsia India went from one trouble and allegation to another and remained on the opposite end of the spectrum. In a country where 80% of the market was driven by Low Cost Carriers, the Tata group’s Full Service Carrier grew faster than its low cost carrier becoming almost triple the size of its LCC offering.
All of this is now history with the focus firmly on two airlines with challenges which are more than a handful. The aviation ecosystem has been impacted by supply chain issues and just about everything gets blamed on “Supply Chain”. What cannot be blamed is good service and training and will the new merged Air India live up to the service levels of Vistara? Your guess is as good as mine.
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