Reminiscing Vistara

After the merger of Air India and Vistara, the experience offered by the latter will continue for customers.

Vistara, a joint venture between Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines, will be consigned to the annuls of history on 11 November, bringing to an end a journey that began with its first commercial flight between Delhi and Mumbai on 9 January 2015.

On Vistara’s first commercial flight from Delhi to Mumbai, was the Chairman of the GMR group, GM Rao. The aircraft was received at Mumbai airport by Cyrus Mistry, former Chairperson of the Tata Group and GVK Reddy, Managing Director of GVK Group.

During a celebratory dinner in Mumbai that week, Ratan Tata made an emotional speech about how this would have been a very happy day for JRD Tata and recalled the two failed attempts (during JRD’s lifetime) by the Tata group to start an airline.

Before the commercial flight, an Airbus A320 UK 890 flew with a host of invited dignitaries including journalists who flew from Delhi to Mumbai and got their first taste of what a premium economy class seat feels like on a domestic route (no other airline in India operated with a premium economy section then).

The flight also gave a glimpse of how closely involved the airline was with the powers that be. On the return flight from Mumbai, Ram Madhav, a former General Secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party, who was recently appointed as election-in-charge for the just concluded assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir, was seated in the business class.

Before boarding, journalists on that flight had a field day. There were officials of aircraft leasing companies who were more than willing to tell them how Jet Airways had defaulted on lease payments and that the leasing companies were going to be taking their aircraft back (in January 2019, Jet Airways “temporarily ceased operations” in April of the same year and all attempts to take to the skies have failed till now).

Coincidentally, Vistara also used a Jet Airways aircraft on its first international flight from Delhi to Singapore which took off on 6 August 2019.

Changes Along the Way

Vistara which started off with a three-class configuration cabin — economy, premium economy and business class — on its aircraft, adapted quickly to the needs of the Indian market. The top brass of the airline realised that not all routes in India had an appetite for premium economy seating. So it was decided to drop that section and offer an all-economy class seating on aircraft flying on select routes like Delhi-Kerala.

What will probably be unknown to the flying public is that many in the airline were not in favour of having a premium economy class. The common pushback at the time was that premium economy works on flights longer than eight hours. No flight in India is over three-and-a-half hours.

But in the end, it became the successful differentiator for Vistara. It brought in incremental revenue and was so popular in the market that recently Air India also decided to go for a premium economy cabin on its Airbus A320 New Engine Option (NEO) aircraft.

In June this year, Air India refitted two new A320neo aircraft – VT-RTW and VT-RTZ – in a three-class configuration featuring eight seats in business, 24 extra legroom seats in premium economy, and 132 seats in economy class.

Pretty much the same thing happened with Vistara’s business class. After receiving its eighth aircraft, Vistara realised that there was not the kind of demand for business class seats on domestic routes as they had initially anticipated. From the ninth aircraft onwards, the airline started adding more seats in premium economy, which had caught the public's interest by then, and economy class sections of the aircraft, and started cutting back on business class seats. The first eight aircraft were later retrofitted.

The decision makers at Vistara also realised that India was a market where a lot of the dealing was done in cash. The airline decided to allow passengers to pay by cash at the ATO [as Vistara employees like to call it (the Airport Ticket Office)] if they wanted to upgrade from economy to premium economy or to business class.

Another change was that the cabin crew flying between Delhi and Bangkok was given an overnight stay in the Thai capital. Earlier it was only the cockpit crew that could spend the night in Bangkok to operate the flight back to India the next day.

Many Firsts in Indian Aviation

Vistara was the first Indian airline to offer Wi-Fi on-board and serve freshly brewed Starbucks Coffee in the air.

It was also the first airline in India to offer flat beds to its business class passengers flying on its Airbus A321 fleet. This was something unique as the Airbus A321 is a narrowbody single-aisle aircraft and the business class seats on the other single-aisle narrowbody aircraft which offer business class provide a greater recline than the seats in economy class. In the region, the Dubai-based carrier flydubai provides lie-flat business class seats on its narrowbody fleet of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft.

Vistara proved to be the saving grace for the Indian aviation industry during the Wings Airshow in Hyderabad in 2020 with the Boeing 787-9 aircraft, popularly known as the Dreamliner, flown by Commander Amitabh Singh, formerly Director Operations, Air India, which landed at Begumpet airport. This aircraft was the only widebody aircraft on static display at that airshow.

Earlier this year, Vistara took delivery of the seventh and last of the Dreamliners it had ordered.

Normally at airshows around the world, it is common for airlines from the country hosting the show to show their biggest and finest, as Emirates did by showcasing its Airbus A380, the world’s largest passenger aircraft at the Dubai Airshow. During the last edition of Wings earlier this year, Air India did a static display of the widebody Airbus A350 aircraft.

Tribute to JRD Tata

In 2018, to pay tribute to 150 years of Tata Sons, the airline flew a retrojet which “had a special livery which was created using old black and white photos,” wrote Sanjiv Kapoor, then with Vistara, on Twitter, responding to a video that showed the unveiling of the retrojet. “We had to re-imagine the colours,” Kapoor said.

The retrojet bore the registration VT-ATV, which is said to have been used by a Tata Air Lines DC-3 aircraft in the 1940s (Tata Air Lines was India’s first airline, founded by JRD Tata who is considered to be the father of Indian aviation).

The crew’s retro uniform projected the qualities embodied by the airline’s cabin crew — a sense of style, elegance, warmth, care and professionalism. These uniforms were to be worn on special occasions, beginning with the retrofitted aircraft’s inaugural flight on 5 September 2018 from Delhi to Mumbai. The retrofitted flight flew for a few months.

Also featured on the inaugural retrofit flight was a menu with JRD Tata’s favourite dishes, as remembered by senior chefs at Taj Hotels. Passengers were served Cheddar Cheese and Onion Omelette, Crêpe au Champignon, Meat Medley, Waldorf Salad, Minestrone Soup, Herb Roast Chicken, Goan Prawn Curry and Crème Caramel.

Did the Airline Make Money During Its Time in Operations?

Vistara is not a listed company and so it does not have to disclose whether it was a profitable airline or not. In its entire existence, the airline only once declared (in January last year) that it had made a net profit. But while Vinod Kannan, the last Chief Executive Officer of the airline, did hold a video call with journalists, he declined to get into specific numbers on the net profit, which the airline declared for the quarter that ended in December of the previous year.

The only thing Kannan said was that the profit was excluding unrealised foreign currency loss and non-operating income. Vistara remains silent about breaking even in Q4.

In a statement issued earlier, Vistara said it crossed the $1.0 billion revenue mark and remained EBITDA-positive in the current fiscal year and reported breaking even for the first time in the quarter that ended December 2022.

The market estimates that Vistara booked a loss of $1.8 billion, including not a single quarter of net profitability and that its claim of operational profitability without sharing actual numbers could be a profit of one rupee or Rs 1 crore before financing costs. The general market feeling is that since the airline lost money every year, it was not a success. “Offering value comes at a cost. Generating revenue lower than the costs shows that the market appreciates but does not value the service,” a market analyst argued.

Will the Vistara Product Disappear From November 12?

The brand will cease to exist from 11 November but what Vistara has created will remain long after. If you go to the Air India website and book a flight, you will get the option of continuing to fly in the premium economy cabin.

The Vistara flights will have an Air India code and a four-digit flight number. For example, the Delhi-Bangkok daily service will operate as UK 121 and the return flight as UK 122 till 11 November. But these will become AI flight 2121 when leaving from Delhi on the morning of 12 November and AI 2122 while returning from the Thai capital. “Vistara aircraft will be operated by Air India and will be identified by a special four-digit Air India code beginning with the digit “'2'”, the airline has stated.

Probably realising that the younger Vistara is offering a much superior product than the over seven-decade-old Air India, post the merger, the experience offered by the former will continue for customers.

But whether AI’s decision to retrofit its aircraft with a premium economy cabin will be enough to assuage the feeling of the flying public is something that needs to be seen. Globally, airlines are known to club flights for what they call “operational reasons”, which legally they are permitted to do.

So, it is possible that an Air India passenger booking a flight with the four-digit code beginning with “2” might book a premium economy seat and realise only when they reach the airport that the aircraft has been changed for “operational reasons” and there is no premium economy, and they will have to fly in economy class instead.

(Ashwini Phadnis is a senior Delhi based journalist. This is an opinion article and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)