Vistara CEO says 98 per cent of pilots signed new contract
Vistara on Saturday apologised for flight delays and cancellations in the past few days. The airline’s chief executive officer (CEO) Vinod Kannan in a statement said that they are deeply concerned about the inconvenience caused to the customers due to the disruptions in services.
“We would like to again clarify that these disruptions were due to the cascading effect of a multitude of factors. While we do have adequate crew for normal operations, since we have been operating on a high utilisation, we were challenged due to operational disruption,” Kannan said.
“Having said that, we acknowledge the inconvenience this has caused to our customers and sincerely apologise to them for the same,” he added.
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While asserting that Vistara’s management is addressing the issues on a war footing, the airline CEO said that the company is hiring more pilots and also ‘carefully scaling back operations slightly to provide the much needed resilience, and a buffer in the rosters.’
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“We have also deployed larger aircraft like our B787-9 Dreamliner and A321neo aircraft on select domestic routes to accommodate more customers, wherever possible. Furthermore, we are reaching out to all customers affected by the delays and cancellations over the last weekend, to offer relevant refunds and compensation,” Kannan added.
The Vistara CEO said that the situation had improved with on-time performance improving for the last three days. “We hope to stabilize our operations for the rest of April 2024 by this weekend,” he added.
Vistara CEO on pilot contracts
Kannan said that 98 per cent of the pilots signed the new contract, adding that he is aware that some pilots have some concerns and queries regarding the contract.
“We are engaging with them to clarify and resolve the same. However, this has not caused any visible spike in attrition amongst pilots,” he added.
The Tata Group airline had cancelled many flights earlier this week due to the non-availability of pilots and was forced to temporarily reduce the overall flight operations to stabilise the situation. The carrier cancelled more than 125 flights over three days from April 1.
