Vistara to add new routes out of Mumbai

Jet Airways suspending operations created a big void in the Indian aviation market. On the domestic front, Ministry of Civil Aviation has temporarily distributed some of Jet Airways flights to other carriers, and they have quickly launched a slew of new temporary flights especially out of Mumbai and Delhi.

Vistara and AirAsia India added flights from Mumbai
SpiceJet added flights from Mumbai
12 new SpiceJet flights from Mumbai and Delhi
15 additional new SpiceJet flights from Mumbai and Delhi
IndiGo launched 11 new flights from Mumbai Terminal 2
Massive expansion by IndiGo from Mumbai and Delhi
GoAir domestic expansion out of Mumbai and Delhi Terminal 2
Air India add 11 new domestic flights

According to CNBC, around 479 slots of a total 766 slots held by Jet Airways has been distributed temporarily. Till now, flights have been added using only 40% of the redistributed slots.

Airline	Slots Allocated	Notes
SpiceJet	130	68 at Mumbai
IndiGo	127	38 at Delhi
Vistara	110	48 at Mumbai
GoAir	44
AirAsia India	42
Air India	24
Alliance Air	2

As you can see Vistara got 48 slots at Mumbai, i.e., they can add 24 route pairs. Vistara added eight route pairs touching Mumbai temporarily, so they have enough slots to add 16 more route pairs. But to add new flights they need additional aircraft as per a new regulation set by Ministry of Civil Aviation while allocating Jet Airways slots temporarily.

Vistara is adding four ex-Jet Airways 737s, with two of them already inducted, VT-TGA/B. Besides, Vistara is adding an all-economy A320neo, VT-TNN. The A320neo is an ex-WOW Air aircraft, TF-NEO. So which routes are Vistara planning to add out of Mumbai?

VT-TGB, ex-Jet Airways 737 now flying for Vistara

The newest issue of Vistara’s inflight magazine holds clues for the new destinations that you should see in June 2019, coming from Vistara’s induction of 5 aircraft.

As you can see, Vistara has mentioned the following new route pairs in the June issue of its in-flight magazine,

Mumbai – Chennai
Mumbai – Chandigarh
Mumbai – Varanasi

On the other hand, Vistara isn’t accepting bookings for two temporary flights which it launched in April 2019, probably to deploy those aircraft on different routes.

Mumbai – Kolkata from June 7, 2019
Hyderabad – Pune from June 10, 2019

With five new aircraft, Vistara can add around 15-20 new route pairs depending on aircraft utilisation and routes. Say for example a Mumbai-Chennai-Mumbai-Chandigarh-Mumbai-Chennai-Mumbai will require one aircraft. While both Mumbai-Varanasi and Mumbai-Chandigarh have around 5x daily flights one-way on other carriers, Mumbai-Chennai has around 18x daily flights on other carriers.

Suffice to say, apart from the new routes, Vistara will add new frequencies on existing routes, probably on those routes where Vistara doesn’t offer a day return flight like Hyderabad.