Vistara flight cancellations: 15 pilots quit airline, join domestic budget carrier

A day after cancelling up to 50 flights and 52 today, at least 15 senior first officers resigned from the airline, sources told news agency PTI on Tuesday. The sources said at least 15 senior first officers resigned from Vistara and joined a domestic budget carrier. The airline operates a little over 300 flights daily and has a fleet of 70 planes comprising A320-family aircraft and Boeing 787s. The pilots are protesting revised contracts following the airline's merger with Air India.

Vistara, co-owned by the Tata group and Singapore Airlines, has around 800 pilots and the senior first officers who resigned had completed their conversion training that allowed them to operate wide-body Boeing 787 planes. However, they did not get the duty for flying the 787 aircraft, the sources said.

Business Today could not verify the news independently. 

In alignment with the impending consolidation with Air India, the airline has executed new contractual agreements for its pilots. The primary objective of these arrangements is to achieve pay equivalence with their counterparts at Air India.

Pursuant to the recent agreements, there will be a readjustment in compensation for junior co-pilots. Their monthly salaries will be reduced from Rs 2.35 lakh to Rs 1.88 lakh as the prescribed flying hours have been reduced substantially from 70 hours to 40 hours.

However, many Vistara pilots have been protesting as the fixed component of compensation has been reduced and there are more flying-linked incentives that are subject to certain conditions.

The airline on Monday announced that the airline had a significant number of flight cancellations and delays in the past few days due to various reasons, including crew unavailability.

Amid the cancellations, aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Tuesday ordered the airline to file daily reports on flight cancellations and delays.

In a post on X on Tuesday, the Ministry of civil aviation also said it was “monitoring the situation of Vistara flight cancellations” though flight operations were managed by airlines and underlined that the airlines were required to take stipulated steps to minimise passenger inconvenience.

“Airlines have to comply with DGCA norms to ensure passenger facilitation in case of cancellation or delay of flights,” the ministry said.

The airline has also been asked to ensure that the relevant provisions of CAR Section-3, Series M, Part-IV on “facilities to be provided to passengers by airlines due to denied boarding, cancellation of flights and delays in flights” are complied with like advance information, an option of refund, compensation (if applicable) etc. to the passengers.

Airlines are supposed to comply with the norms of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to ensure passenger facilitation in case of cancellation or delay of flights. The DGCA officials are overseeing the situation to ensure compliance of the above mentioned CAR (Civil Aviation Requirements) and minimise passenger inconvenience.