In recent news, the Tata Group-owned airline, Vistara faced ongoing flight cancellations for the fourth day in a row.
How Did This Happen?
Interestingly, the event occurred amidst pilots from sister airline Air India urging the group’s chairman to address the concerns raised by Vistara pilots.
On Thursday, around 20 flights were canceled, taking the total number of cancellations to around 147, according to the two Vistara officials under the condition of anonymity.
They further said, “Around 20 Vistara flights were canceled on Thursday. Its on time performance (OTP) however, marginally improved from 85.9% on Wednesday to 86.4% on Thursday.”
So far, there is no information released by the airline regarding the number of flights canceled or the most affected routes.
Although, the spokesperson assured that the airline has been doing its best to mitigate the impact of flight cancellations.
Adding, “In order to minimize inconvenience caused to customers, cancellations are being done well ahead of the departure date as we have temporarily reduced capacity while ensuring adequate connectivity across our network. Furthermore, we are also offering alternate flight options or refunds to affected customers, as applicable.”
Poor Planning And Rostering
All this started as the Vistara pilots have called in sick after being forced to sign revised contracts.
This contract has restricted flying time for a co- pilot from 70 to 40 hours and reduced salaries.
An airline official noted, “The airline’s situation is due to poor planning and rostering. They do not have adequate designated examiners which are required to train pilots and conduct various tests for them to get additional rating on their certificate.”
Interestingly, the airline dismissed this claim, “We confirm that we have an adequate number of instructors”.
On Wednesday, the airline’s chief executive officer (CEO) Vinod Kannan had a 30-minute townhall with pilots where he assured airline’s pilots that airline services will be normalized by the weekend, adding that the pilots’ rosters will be fixed to maintain their work-life balance.
In the meantime, Air India’s two pilots unions Indian Pilots Guild (Boeing pilots association) and Indian Commercial Pilots Guild (Airbus pilots’ union) wrote to the Tata Group chairman N Chandrasekaran on Thursday.
They have urged them to have a dialogue with pilots and address the concerns raised by Vistara pilots.
