NEW DELHI, Nov 11: Vistara took its flight into the night on Monday as the carrier’s time in the Indian aviation landscape was to come to an end. Playing the song “kal ho nah ho,” Vistara crew and even some passengers became emotional on the last day of its existence before it merges with Air India from Tuesday.
Starting November 12, Vistara’s aircraft will be operated by Air India with a special code ‘AI 2’. The Tata group-owned airline Vistara was launched nine years ago in January 2015 as a joint venture between Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines. From November 12, all Vistara flights will operate as Air India flights after the merger.
“Grateful to have experienced Vistara on its final day of operations — a brand that truly delivered on its promise of ‘a new feeling’ in travel. Vistara is one of the few brands which overlapped brand promise with brand delivery so seamlessly,” an X user wrote sharing his last Vistara journey.
The Air India-Vistara mergers comes as part of Tata group’s strategic move to merge its airline entities under the Air India brand, aiming to streamline operations and enhance customer experience. The government in August 2024 approved the foreign direct investment by Singapore Airlines as part of the merger. After the merger, Singapore Airlines (SA) will have a 25.1 per cent stake in Tata Group-owned Air India. Singapore Airlines will make an additional investment of ₹ 3,194.5 crore in Tata Group-owned airline.
In 2015, Vistara was set up as a Joint Venture (JV) with SA’s 49 per cent stake. Vistara had closed all its booking on September 3. The tickets were allowed to be booked for travel till November 11. However, those who had earlier booked Vistara tickets for travel on November 12 or afterwards, their tickets will be transferred to Air India flights.
Singapore’s flagship carrier announced a plan to merge the decade-old Vistara and Tata-owned Air India in November 2022, in a bid to create a dominant full-service airline in the domestic and international markets. The merger process, however, was anything but smooth, with problems like pilot shortages causing widespread flight cancellations and Vistara crew protesting over plans to align their salary structures with Air India proving to be hurdles.
Air India has deployed additional resources, including help desk kiosks, at touch points and airports to ensure a smooth experience for Vistara passengers. There will be “customer support staff wearing ‘How may I assist you?’ Air India x Vistara branded t-shirts for support.”
The staff will work with airport security to guide customers with old Vistara tickets to the nearest help desk or to Air India customer support staff and deploy advisory on self-service kiosks. In due course, Vistara airport ticketing offices and check-in terminals will become that of Air India. Vistara aircraft will be identified by a special four-digit Air India code beginning with the digit ‘2’.
Over the last few months, 2,70,000 customers who had booked Vistara flights have been migrated to Air India, and more than 4.5 million Vistara loyalty programme members are being migrated to Air India’s loyalty programme. Further, customers calling the Vistara contact centre will be automatically directed to Air India representatives, who will ensure a seamless experience during this transition.
The integrated entity will have a fleet of more than 200 planes, offering connectivity to 90 domestic and international destinations. Air India’s narrow-body fleet continues to be upgraded with new aircraft being delivered, legacy aircraft being refitted with entirely new interiors and Vistara’s catering now also extended to Air India.
Air India’s wide-body fleet has also been augmented with the entry of six A350 aircraft that have started to fly between Delhi and London, and Delhi and New York, the airline said. In the first month after the merger, nearly 1,15,000 passengers who had purchased Vistara tickets pre-merger are expected to fly on unified Air India.
Vistara chief executive officer Vinod Kanan, who has also been holding the role of Chief Integration Officer for the merger of the two entities, will continue in the latter role post-merger. Besides, he will be a member of the management committee and report directly to Air India CEO Campbell Wilson, a company statement said.
Deepak Rajawat, Chief Commercial Officer of Vistara will take up the position of Chief Financial Officer at the low-cost arm Air India Express, reporting to its chief executive officer Aloke Singh and also support Air India Group CFO Sanjay Sharma in strategic initiatives and projects. Meanwhile, Vikas Agarwal, the current CFO of Air India Express, will move to a new role in Air India.
Senior vice president for flight operations at Vistara Hamish Maxwell has assumed an advisory role to Air India Express CEO Aloke Singh while Pushpinder Singh, Chief Operations Officer of Air India Express, returns to flying, as per the statement. A successor for Singh will be announced in due course.
Deepa Chadha and Vinod Bhatt, senior vice president HR & Corporate Affairs and Chief Information Officer of Vistara respectively, will take on senior roles at other Tata group companies, the statement said adding that Vistara CFO Niyant Maru, who had continued beyond his superannuation date to see through the completion of the merger, will retire at the end of his current term. All other Air India Group CXO roles and reporting lines roles will remain unchanged.
A section of Air India pilots, however, is unhappy in the run-up to the Vistara merger over different retirement age limits for pilots of the two Tata Group-owned airlines as the management is yet to address the issue.
At Air India, the retirement age for pilots and other staff is 58 years, whereas at Vistara it is 60 years. “While the management was prompt in bringing parity in terms of salary structure and other working conditions of the employees of the two airlines as part of the merger process, it is yet to address the issue of two different retirement age limits,” sources said.
Vistara, like many other airlines, entered Indian aviation after the liberalisation of foreign direct investment norms. In 2012, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh-led UPA government allowed foreign airlines to buy up to 49 per cent in a domestic carrier, which later resulted in the now defunct Jet Airways securing 24 per cent stake from Gulf carrier Etihad besides the birth of AirAsia India and Vistara.
With operations commencing on started flying on January 9, 2015, Vistara soon became synonymous with quality food and service and cultivated a loyal customer base. Meanwhile, Kingfisher went belly up in 2012 while Air Sahara, which was acquired by Jet Airways and renamed as JetLite, sank with Jet Airways in 2019.
(Manas Dasgupta)