Vistara crosses 2 million passenger milestone

Vistara, India's newest full-service carrier, flew its two millionth passenger today. Being the fastest growing full-service carrier in India, the airline crossed two million mark in record time. Vistara, which had started its operation on 9 January 2015, took 17 months to achieve this milestone as it was predicted in this blog before. Earlier it had achieved one million flyers on 23 December 2015 just before completing one year of operation.

Korean Air to launch Delhi flight in December 2016

Latest Update as of 2 July 2016: Korean Air launches 5x weekly flight on Delhi-Seoul Incheon route effective from 1 December 2016 and to be operated on Airbus A330-200 aircraft.

Korean Air plans to launch non-stop direct flight to Delhi from its Seoul Incheon hub in December 2016. Delhi features prominently among the new routes the carrier mulling as part of its long-haul international network revamp. The airline is also planning to launch a direct flight to Tehran while it is to drop Sao Paulo flight after the end of Olympic Games. Korean Air, the largest airline of South Korea, already serves Mumbai with three weekly flights from Seoul Incheon and is expected to operate at least three weekly flights to Delhi.

Vistara to go Big with Kolkata

Vistara, the premium full service carrier has extended its service to Kolkata with double daily* flights to Delhi commencing today. Kolkata, the fifth busiest airport in India and the busiest airport in Eastern India, becomes the 17th destination of the airline, it also the third busiest domestic route from Delhi Airport. As of today, Vistara operates a total of 457 weekly flights in a network of 36 routes across India. And the airline plans to increase the number of weekly flights to 580 by the start of the winter schedule 2016-17 (effective 30 October 2016) with Kolkata having the third largest operation after Delhi and Mumbai. Vistara seems to be bullish about its prospect in Kolkata as it plans to operate as many as six-seven daily flights from Kolkata on four different routes by the year end. In the immediate term, it is likely to announce the second route from Kolkata by early next week and it would be interesting to see whether it opens the route to a destination within its existing network (like Mumbai, Bengaluru, Guwahati) or launch a all new destination (like Port Blair).

Vistara team during service launch in Kolkata on 9 June 2016

Focus on CAT-II, IIA & III routes in Vistara's initial summer schedule

On 8 March 2016, Vistara has revealed its initial summer 2016 schedule which proposes to take the number weekly flights to almost 400 from the current level of 317, a 26% rise effective from 27 March 2016; The schedule also adds 3 new destinations namely, Jammu, Kochi and Srinagar in the network. The airline launches new destinations like Jammu and Srinagar, located north of Delhi for the first time in its 15 months of operational history which is going to help it implementing the hub-spoke model better out of its Delhi Airport hub.

Flashback: Vistara's operation through the past 12 months

Vistara team celebrating its Millionth passenger on 23 December 2015

Vistara, the joint-venture airline between Tata group and Singapore Airlines, had started its scheduled flight services last year on 9 January, it is the newest full-service carrier in India. The service launch was kept relatively low-key affair. The airline got its name from the Sanskrit word Vistaar, meaning 'limitless expanse'. Vistara just completes its first year of operations. Here we will revisit its operations, services and some of its achievements through out the past one year. Vistara has achieved several milestone during the course of its one year journey, for example it maintained best on-time performance record for 4 consecutive months (Aug-Nov'15). Achieved first million passenger within its first year of operations. As of November 2015 Vistara has 1.9% market-share in India's domestic aviation market.

Vistara: Fast fleet expansion, route development lags

VT-TTB, Vistara first A320-232 aircraft at Delhi Airport

Vistara, the countries latest full-service carrier is a joint-venture (51:49) between Tata Group and Singapore Airlines. The airline had commenced its operation on 9 January 2015. The airline has a robust fleet expansion program which stands at 9 even before it completes 1 year of operation. It has a network of 12 destinations and serves 25 routes as of today. Vistara has so far carried 7.72 Lakh passengers in the first 10 months and crossed the 1 Lakh monthly passengers mark for the first time in October. And the airline is expected to cross the milestone of flying the first million passengers by the end of the year, which is also well within its 1 year of operation. Here we will discuss how the airline so far performed in terms of its aircraft utilization and route development and whether it is able to maintain pace with its fast fleet expansion to have a maximum utilization of those capacity?

What if '5/20' rule goes tomorrow?

VT-TTB, the first A320 aircraft of Vistara at Delhi Airport.

The so called '5/20' rule which restricts Indian airlines with less than 5 years of domestic flying experience and a fleet size of less than 20 from flying on international routes, was introduced in 2004, close to the arrival of low-cost carriers (LCC) in India. It was meant to protect the then incumbent players like Air India, Air Sahara, Jet Airways from the potential competition from new entrants like Air Deccan, Kingfisher Airlines, SpiceJet and others. On October 30, the Ministry of civil aviation (MoCA), the nodal ministry on aviation has released a draft policy called 'National civil aviation policy 2015' (NCAP 2015). And the MoCA is expected to come up with the final aviation policy by the year end. One of the proposals on the draft policy includes revision of '5/20' rule, either partial or complete removal of it. Federation of Indian Airlines (FIA), the lobbying group consisting Jet Airways, SpiceJet, IndiGo and GoAir, is actively opposing any relaxation in the '5/20' rule.