Vistara cancellations: DGCA seeks airline’s daily report; 100 flights fail to take-off in 2 days

Pilots oppose airline policy: Aviation watchdog Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has directed budget airline Vistara to submit a daily status report on flight cancellations and delays after mass flight cancellations owing to the non-availability of pilots. On the second consecutive day on Tuesday, cancellations of Vistara’s flights continued, reaching almost 100 flights being impacted in the last two days. The aviation regulator has said that it is monitoring the situation in connection with the Vistara cancellations. 

On Monday evening, a  Vistara spokesperson had said that the airline had a significant number of flight cancellations and delays in the past few days due to various reasons, including crew unavailability.  The airline said it temporarily reduced the number of flights to ensure adequate connectivity across its network. As per media reports, the first officers of Vistara are reporting sick forcing the airline to cancel flights as their salaries have been reduced significantly. The source claimed that some components of the salary have been reduced while incentives linked to flying hours have been raised.

A day after Vistara announced reducing operations due to non-availability of the crew and other operational reasons, sources privy to the matter on Tuesday said some commanders as well as first officers of the airline’s A320 fleet are also reporting sick to protest pay revisions due to signing of new contracts.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation on Tuesday said in view of various flight disruptions of Vistara, it has asked the airline to submit daily information and details on the flights that are being cancelled and delayed.

The officials of the DGCA are also monitoring the situation to ensure compliance with requirements for providing facilities to passengers in case of flight cancellations and delays. This is to minimise the inconvenience to passengers, the regulator said.

On Tuesday, the civil aviation ministry said it is monitoring the situation of Vistara flight cancellations. "However, flight operations are managed by Airlines themselves. Airlines have to comply with DGCA norms to ensure passenger facilitation in case of cancellation or delay of flights," the Ministry said in a post on X.

Vistara is a joint venture between Tata Group and Singapore Airlines. Several of the first officers of Vistara's A320 fleet have been reporting sick in the past few weeks and on Monday alone, around 50 flights were cancelled and many were delayed as there were not enough pilots to operate flights.

Vistara has a fleet of 70 planes comprising 63 aircraft from A320 family and 7 wide-body Boeing 787s. As per the summer schedule, which started from March 31, the airline is to operate little over 300 flights daily.

(With PTI inputs)