NEW DELHI:
Vistara
is cutting about 10% of its
flights
following the recent protest by its
pilots
against the airline's "inhumane" rostering that was inducing fatigue and stress. This capacity cut just ahead of the coming peak summer travel season could push fares up. While passengers numbers are at record high, there are few planes to fly them for a variety of reasons like almost 75 planes of IndiGo being grounded due to snag-ridden Pratt & Whitney engines; GoAir grounded since last May; SpiceJet operating a fraction of its schedule and slower than promised supply of ordered planes from crisis-hit Boeing and Airbus.
The demand-supply mismatch is likely to push the already high
airfares
even higher.
"We are carefully scaling back our operations by around 25-30 flights per day, roughly 10% of the capacity we were operating. This will take us back to the same level of flight operations as at the end of February 2024, and provide the much-needed resilience and buffer in the rosters. These cancellations are done mostly in our domestic network and much ahead of time to minimise inconvenience to the customers," a Vistara spokesperson said.
"All affected passengers have already been reaccommodated on other flights, as applicable. In line with what we had said earlier, with this all the changes for the month of April 2024 have been done and the situation has already gotten better with our on-time performance improving for the last few days. Looking ahead, we are hopeful of stable operations for the rest of the month and beyond," he added.
Vistara pilots' complaint regarding poor work life balance; fatigue and stress; being on standby almost always for being called to operate flights and about pay structure was recently echoed by their counterparts in other Tata Group airlines including Air India and earlier by IndiGo and Akasa. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had amended the flight duty time limitation (FDTL) norms for pilots of Indian carriers to ensure more humane rostering.
The regulator had termed the pilots’ deaths seen in recent times as "a wake-up call." But airlines' opposition to the same on the grounds that implementing the amended norms will increase their pilot requirement and hence wage bill, has led to it being deferred with no firm date from which - and if - it will take effect.
Vistara has responded partially to pilot concerns -- there's not much it can do about pay cut as the wage structure has to be brought at par with Air India with which it will be merged into by the year end. The 70-aircraft strong airline operates about 350 flights daily with its 1,000-odd pilots.
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