Vistara starts Bengaluru and Guwahati flights from Kolkata

Today the Tata Singapore Airlines joint venture full service carrier, Vistara has commenced two new routes from Kolkata to Bengaluru and Guwahati and thus providing one-stop direct flight connection between Bengaluru and Guwahati via Kolkata. The airline is now operating over 500 weekly flights in a network of 44  routes across 18 destinations. With the launch of Bengaluru and Guwahati routes from Kolkata today, Kolkata comes at per with Mumbai in Vistara's network with four non-stop routes and ranks third in terms of overall operations with seven daily departures following Delhi and Mumbai. Vistara currently has a fleet of 13 Airbus A320-232 aircraft out of which it stations two in Kolkata, one each in Bengaluru and Mumbai while the rest nine are based in its Delhi hub. 

Following the launch of its maiden flights to Kolkata from Delhi on 10 June, the airline has quickly scaled up its presence in the Eastern metropolis, as predicted in this blog before. The airline has opened second route to Port Blair in late September and added the third daily frequency on the Delhi-Kolkata route at the same time for the festive rush in first half of October. Today it commences double daily flight to Bengaluru and a single daily flight to Guwahati. Vistara is now park two aircraft in Kolkata. 

Already two other full-service carriers are operating on the Kolkata-Bengaluru sector. Air India flies a single daily flight on the route while Jet Airways has double daily flight on the route. From the coming winter schedule starting from 30 October Jet Airways is scheduled to increase the frequency to three daily flights. But the Bengaluru-Guwahati route will be interesting as it was relatively underserved. Jet Airways and SpiceJet offer one-stop flight via Kolkata and Vistara to have direct competition with one-stop offering of these two carriers. At the time of announcement of this new one-stop connections by Vistara in early September, there were only two daily non-stop flights on the route both by IndiGo, soon AirAsia India launched its first ever non-stop from 22 September as indicated in the blog. Now to everyone's surprise SpiceJet launches its first ever non-stop flights from Guwahati to two Southern cities Bengaluru and Chennai with effect from 15 November.
Vistara Kolkata-Bengaluru schedule eff 18 October 2016

Flight No	Origin: Departure	Destination: Arrival
UK 837	Kolkata: 07:00	Bengaluru: 09:40
UK 897	Kolkata: 16:50	Bengaluru: 19:35
UK 838	Bengaluru: 10:20	Kolkata: 12:50
UK 898	Bengaluru: 20:30	Kolkata: 23:00

Vistara Kolkata-Guwahati schedule eff 18 October 2016

Flight No	Origin: Departure	Destination: Arrival
UK 838	Kolkata: 13:20	Guwahati: 14:30
UK 897	Guwahati: 14:40	Kolkata: 16:00

Vistara Bengaluru-Guwahati via Kolkata schedule eff 18 October 2016

Flight No	Origin: Departure	Destination: Arrival
UK 838	Bengaluru: 10:20	Guwahati: 14:30
UK 897	Guwahati: 14:40	Bengaluru: 19:35

Recently, Vistara has received CAT-IIB certification from DGCA for extreme low visibility operations. This is expected to help the airline to maintain its regular schedule during the upcoming winter fog season as Vistara operates to many fog choked airports in North and Northeast India including its Delhi hub. Vistara had started flying to Northeast in April 2015 with a triangular flight on Delhi-Guwahati-Bagdogra-Delhi route but it switched to Delhi-Bagdogra-Guwahati-Delhi routing between 20 December and 13 February to avoid late afternoon operations at fog prone Bagdogra airport. This year the carrier has decided to go for the Delhi-Bagdogra-Guwahati-Delhi routing much earlier, in fact already started the routing from October and scheduled to continue till the start of next summer schedule in late March 2017. 
In mid June this year, Vistara has started Delhi-Guwahati-Delhi terminating service (UK868/UK867) providing second daily flight on Delhi-Guwahati route and first ever non-stop connection on Guwahati-Delhi route. The airline is now also operating Delhi-Bagdogra-Delhi terminating service (UK741/UK977) providing first ever non-stop connection both way between Delhi and Bagdogra but this flight is available only till 13 November.