Eight reasons for Vistara’s massive flight cancellations

Vistara faces pilot shortage and flight cancellations due to crew unavailability, new pay structure, and alleged malpractices.

Vistara cancelled another 61 flights on Tuesday, a day after it witnessed 49 flight cancellations due to pilot “unavailability”, leading to the aviation safety regulator cracking the whip on the airline and asking it to submit daily figures of cancellations and delays.

The airline announced on Monday that it will temporarily reduce the number of flights to deal with the problem of crew unavailability and also deploy larger aircraft like the B787-9 Dreamliner and A321neo on select domestic routes to combine flights or accommodate more number of customers.

Sources have blamed a multitude of factors for flight cancellations, including discontentment among a section of pilots who have gone on a silent protest following a new pay structure announced in mid-February, a lack of adequate buffer pilots, as well as alleged malpractices in pilot rostering.

1. It is believed that First Officers will take a pay cut of ₹80,000 to ₹1,40,000 because of the new pay structure which offers a guaranteed flying allowance for only 40 hours, instead of 70 hours.

2. First Officers will also have to fly for up to 76 hours to earn the salary they were drawing at 70 hours earlier.

3. There are also concerns about delays in a co-pilots getting upgraded to a wide body from a narrow body much later than an Air India pilot would in the merged entity. On paper, there is a 3:1 formula, which means for every three Air Indian who gets upgraded to a widebody, only one Vistara pilot will get the upgrade. But this too is not being adhered to.

4. Combine this with high pilot training costs that have sky rocketed in the recent past and massive EMIs younger pilots have to pay, which adds to their financial stress.