As Vistara flies into the sunset today, its legacy sets a benchmark for enlarged Air India | Business News
In its one decade of operations, Vistara made a mark for its product and service quality as India’s foremost full-service carrier, setting itself apart in a market dominated by no-frills airlines. The airline will fly its final flight on Monday before its merges with Tata group’s flagship carrier Air India on Tuesday.
It would not be an understatement to say that Vistara was able to carve a unique space for itself in the mind of the Indian flyer, which is evident from flyers’ reactions on social media, many brimming with nostalgia.
The wheels for the merger were set in motion in 2022 after the Tata group acquired Air India from the government. Singapore Airlines, which held a 49 per cent stake in Vistara, will own 25.1 per cent of Air India following the merger.
With Air India being a much older airline and its brand having greater recall value globally, it was decided to retain the Air India brand and retire the Vistara brand for the merged airline. The merger is a critical part of Air India’s transformation programme Vihaan.Ai, that seeks to build the airline into one of global repute.
But the announcement of the merger brought with it concerns for consumers about Vistara’s product and service quality after the merger. Under government control, Air India was under financial stress, and this reflected in its product and service quality which was seen as below the standards expected from a full-service carrier. While the now-privatised airline has undertaken a mammoth fleet modernisation and expansion plan, it still has a large number of legacy aircraft that are in a rundown state.
Perhaps that is one of the reasons why the Air India group has decided to keep the “Vistara experience” unchanged for consumers in the initial months of the merger. All existing Vistara flights will continue to be operated using Vistara’s existing fleet of aircraft and by the existing Vistara crew, although the flight numbers will change to those of Air India. The standard Vistara has set is expected to be the benchmark for the new and enlarged Air India.
“…the intention and plan is to bring Air India up to the same levels as Vistara. I would say that the expertise at Vistara is crucial for that to happen, because we’ve actually burnt our fingers, we’ve learnt things the hard way, and it’s only fair that we transfer that knowledge since the shareholders are the same,” Vistara CEO Vinod Kannan, who is also the chief integration officer for the merger, had said in an interaction with The Indian Express earlier this year.
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Vistara experience to stay
To enable passengers to identify Vistara flights while booking, Air India will use four-digit flight numbers for the flights beginning with “2”, against its three-digit flight numbers. For instance, UK 955 (UK is the current airline identifier code for Vistara flights) will become AI 2955.
“The routes and schedule operated by Vistara aircraft will continue to be the same, alongside the Vistara in-flight experience that includes the product and service such as menu and cutlery on the Vistara aircraft. It will also be serviced by the same crew…In parallel, Air India’s narrowbody 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 had said in October.
Sources indicated that the product differentiation is likely to continue at least till June, when the $400-million retrofit programme for Air India’s legacy narrow-body fleet is scheduled to be completed. With new aircraft coming in and older aircraft undergoing refurbishment, Air India will eventually be able to offer a uniform product across its fleet and the planes will largely become fungible.
Air India also plans to minimise the overlap between its older aircraft and Vistara planes at the individual route level after the carriers’ impending merger in a bid to provide certainty to flyers regarding the quality of product they are likely to experience, The Indian Express had reported on October 24.
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The Tata group airline will try and ensure that each route has consistency in its product offering, which would mean that the carrier will look to deploy Vistara’s aircraft and its own new aircraft on certain priority routes like those connecting metropolitan cities with one another, and deploy Air India’s older aircraft on certain other routes, per sources. The idea is to set the customer’s expectations right and offer a consistent product on that route irrespective of the flight booked.
The rejig will not be limited to just the domestic network of the enlarged Air India, and would include international routes as well where currently both Air India and Vistara operate. Slots at certain international airports are also being adjusted accordingly.
D-Day preparations
In an effort to minimise confusion for passengers in view of the merger, Air India has deployed additional resources across touch points in India and is working closely with partner airports, the airline said.
The measures include help desk kiosks at the curbside before terminal entry at hubs and metro city airports, deploy customer support staff wearing Air India x Vistara branded t-shirts for support, and working with airport security to guide customers with old Vistara tickets to the nearest help desk or to Air India customer support staff, among others. Also, customers calling the Vistara contact centre will be automatically directed to Air India representatives.
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Over the past few months, over 2.7 lakh passenger reservations and over 45 lakh loyalty programme members have been migrated to Air India’s digital systems from Vistara. All customers who were booked on Vistara flights scheduled for or after November 12 have been intimated about the changes in bookings, which have now been moved to Air India. Around 140 systems have been migrated from Vistara for the enlarged fleet to operate seamlessly after the merger.
Additionally, the migration involves 3,385 Vistara suppliers, 70 aircraft that operate over 320 daily flights, over 3,300 crew, and 86 IT contracts, among others. Nearly 6,500 Vistara employees have also been migrated to Air India.
The key focus areas for systems migration—being seen as the backbone of the merger from a customer, operations, and employee point of view—include reservation transfers, loyalty account transfers, financial accounts integrity, aircraft and crew transfers, employee payroll integration, airport systems integration, and flight schedule continuity, among others.
