Vistara has recently rejigged their baggage allowance policy, to offer free excess baggage to those who are travelling into India on separate tickets, and then need another airline domestically to help them get to their final destination (s).

Why the need? Because international baggage allowance is usually to the tune of 30 kg or more per pax, and domestic baggage allowance is usually 15 kg per pax. People usually end up buying separate tickets for their international and intra-India travel, seeing there is some sort of an arbitrage in terms of prices when you add it on the same PNR. Nevertheless, they pay the same money to other carriers for the luggage.

Now, Vistara has taken the lead in bringing out a new luggage allowance when you connect from an International carrier. The time given for claiming an extra baggage allowance, as well as the amount of baggage allowance, depends on the class of travel on Vistara. Per their website

• Passengers travelling Vistara in Business Class will be permitted two check-in bags of upto 32 kg each. This special allowance for Business Class will be available within 30 days of the passenger’s international inbound or outbound travel.
• Passengers travelling Vistara in Premium Economy will be permitted two check-in bags of upto 23 kg each. This special allowance for Premium Economy Class will be available within 7 days of the passenger’s international inbound or outbound travel.
• Passengers travelling Vistara in Economy Class will be permitted an enhanced check-in allowance of 23 kg total. This special allowance for Economy Class will be available within 24 hours of the passenger’s international inbound or outbound travel.

Of course, you need to bring your International ticket and/or boarding pass for getting your baggage allowance on Vistara. The allowance only allowed when you are on separate tickets as compared to your international ticket. When your International leg is on the same ticket, you get the allowance on your ticket.

It is of course, not co-incidence that a similar scheme was operated at SpiceJet when they had Sanjiv Kapoor as their COO. He is now at Vistara, and I’m sure he saw merit in bringing this idea to Vistara while SpiceJet had killed it.

I also think this is a smart move by Vistara. With Air India and many other airlines making Delhi their airport of choice in India, it makes a lot of traffic come to Delhi, from where Vistara can pick it up and take it inside India, because Delhi is also the hub for Vistara.

Bottomline

If you are arriving into India from another country and don’t have any sort of elite status or airline affiliations, you may want to look at Vistara for bringing you to your final destination in India.

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