CEO Vinod Kanan revealed that after posting profit for the first time since inception, Vistara is now set to expand its operations by adding new aircraft to its fleet. Vistara, a joint venture between Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines, currently operates a fleet of 53 aircraft. However, the full-service operator is now preparing to add a total of 70 aircraft to its fleet by mid-2024. Very positive and a game changer for us,” Kannan said at a briefing.
Vistara is set to merge with Air India. Kannan said that by the middle of next year, it will have a total of 70 aircraft, including 7 Boeing 787s. Vistara CEO said in a briefing that out of the total 70 aircraft, 10 will be A321 and 53 will also be A320neo. Of the 53 A320 Neos, 10 aircraft will be all economy class and the rest will have three classes. Currently, the airline has a fleet of 53 aircraft.
“We will continue to expand… and international routes will be added,” Kannan said. According to him, there are constraints in terms of traffic rights and slots. He added, “We would love to operate more flights to Dubai, Singapore, but they are all constrained by traffic rights. We had to look at other options… We will look at more points in the Middle East.”
Commenting on the December quarter performance, Kannan said the operating environment has been very strong over the last year and the previous quarter when it comes to demand and average fares. Also, the deployment of wide-body aircraft helped the airline.
“It was one of the strongest quarters (December quarter) that we had from a revenue perspective, if you look at the overall revenue or you look at the unit revenue.
“Strong demand resulting in higher load factor and demand not being overcome due to higher fares, (hence), we were able to achieve very strong revenue performance. The flip side is that the US dollar and fuel price continued to Is.” A growing trend… we have some kind of scale, we have 53 aircraft. So, definitely the unit cost and deployment gets reduced to some extent,” Kannan said.
In addition, he said deployment of larger size aircraft is also having an impact and currently Vistara has three such aircraft in its fleet.
“They are doing very well and demand from Europe has been strong. In fact, flights are flying with load factors above 85-90 per cent. So, it plays a positive role in the airline’s performance.” she added.
Without disclosing the exact figure of profit for the December quarter, the airline on Monday said it has crossed the USD 1 billion revenue mark and remains Ebitda positive in the current financial year.
EBITDA refers to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
“For the first time since inception, the airline reported a net profit (excluding unrealized foreign exchange loss and non-operating income) for the quarter ended December 2022,” Vistara said in a release on Monday.
With inputs from ANI