Vistara apologizes to passengers for flight cancellations due to pilot unrest

Vistara airline on Friday apologized to passengers for the flight cancellations and delays that have taken place since Monday amid unrest among pilots.

“We recognize that our customers’ recent experiences did not meet the standards we hold ourselves to, and we sincerely apologize for this,” the airline said in a social media post.

Describing their situation as that of ‘slavery’, two Air India pilot unions had on Thursday extended their support to the Vistara pilots, who have expressed their grievances over the duty roster and revised salary structure. Vistara is currently being merged with Air India.

Vistara stated: “We have had a significant number of flight cancellations and delays due to various operational reasons and due to the high use of resources (pilots) there was limited space to deal with unforeseen circumstances.”

Since Monday, Vistara has had to cancel more than 150 flights, reportedly because a specific group of pilots suddenly went on sick leave in late March to express their dissatisfaction with the schedule and new salary structure. It typically operates about 350 flights per day.

“The situation has already improved, with our on-time performance increasing to over 80 percent over the past two days. We hope to stabilize our operations for the remainder of April this weekend,” the airline said.

“We are tackling this on a war footing. First and foremost, we have temporarily reduced the number of flights we operate and have also deployed larger aircraft, such as our B787-9 Dreamliner and A321neo, on selected domestic routes to serve more customers where possible. “We are contacting all customers affected by this past weekend’s delays and cancellations to offer relevant refunds and compensation,” the report said.

First print: April 5, 2024 | 11:45 PM IST