Vistara bookings to begin early Oct, expect flights to Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru

Vistara’s first flight should take to the skies sometime this October and bookings start in the first week of next month. The airline, which is a 51:49 joint venture between Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines, will mark the return of the Tatas to aviation after a long hiatus. Though Vistara has not divulged which cities it will initially connect, it may well launch flights to Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Bengaluru from Delhi next month. The first Airbus 320 aircraft is expected to arrive within the next 10 days, after which Vistara must do ‘proving flights’ so that aviation regulator DGCA grants it a flying permit.

A Vistara spokesperson told Firstbiz that bookings can be made by the first week of October for the first flight through select travel agents and through the Vistara website. A full schedule of the airline will be published in the next few days.

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Since Vistara will be a full service airline which will offer hot meals and personalised service to harried domestic passengers, it will be interesting to see how it takes on other full service competitors like Air India and Jet Airways - specially on the country’s busiest route which is the Delhi-Mumbai sector.

The airline is expected to offer two-and-a-half class configurations across its aircraft - Economy, Premium Economy and Business Class seats. Will it offer an inaugural discount? Now that other FSCs like Air India and Jet Airways have also been launching one discount scheme after another to match LCC fares, will Vistara have the leeway to price itself at a premium? Will it hardsell the forgotten concept of luxurious domestic travel to corporate bigwigs?

That Vistara has taken cost control seriously even before beginning operations is apparent. The team at the airline has been without a proper office since it was formed in December last year, when it operated from the Taj Vivanta in Gurgaon. In February this year, the team shifted to a building in Times Square close by but even here, space was optimally utilised and in fact the airline shared the floor with other offices. The cubicles in the Times Square office are small, no-frills. Only by the end of the month will it get a proper office at Gurgaon’s Golf Course Road. A person familiar with developments said that till recently, there was no landline in the office and in many other ways too, employees were told to be cost conscious.

The Vistara spokesperson said being frugal was a conscious decision and the new airline will remain “very cost conscious” in its operations. The person quoted earlier told us even when hiring cabin crew, pilots and others, Vistara is not keen on offering salaries which are significantly higher than competition. Instead, it plans to offer better and “more humane” working conditions for its staff. The Vistara team now stands at 80 employees.

Vistara’s cost consciousness is a prudent strategy - it will have to compete with LCCs which control nearly two-thirds of the domestic market, have a well defined cost rationalisation strategy and offer dirt cheap tickets. With India selling jet fuel at record high prices to airlines because of a flawed taxation structure, airlines must slash cost at the backend to remain profitable. Only IndiGo and much smaller GoAir have turned in profits last fiscal. The two FSC airlines, Jet and Air India, continue to reel under losses.

Though Vistara will have an inherent cost advantge since it will begin with an all-new fleet, it will need to generate adequate aircraft loads while keeping all other operational costs significantly lower to make any money initially.