Vistara was one of the early ones to take advantage of Jet Airways slots being made available. They expanded out of Mumbai by adding a few flights to Bangalore, Hyderabad, Goa and Kolkata.

Vistara is onboarding 4 ex-Jet Airways 737 aircraft and will take 10 of them in total. Apart from this, Vistara is also adding an all-economy A320neo, VT-TNN which flew for erstwhile WOW air. While three Boeing 737-800, VT-TGA/B/D are already inducted into the fleet, the others will join soon. Vistara added new flights to Chandigarh, Amritsar and Guwahati from Delhi using a 737.

Vistara has started adding a few flights out of Mumbai on short notice. They started with Mumbai – Hyderabad, Mumbai – Goa and Mumbai – Chennai for a few days with a 737-800. A few days back, Vistara firmed up its expansion from Mumbai by adding flights to Chennai, Goa, Varanasi and Kolkata, some with multiple frequencies.

Vistara has now added a slew of new flights out of Mumbai from June 13, 2019.

Twice daily Mumbai – Ahmedabad

UK919 BOM0505 – 0620AMD 320 D
UK916 AMD0655 – 0755BOM 320 D

UK929 BOM1955 – 2055AMD 320 D
UK926 AMD2130 – 2255BOM 320 D

Twice daily Mumbai – Hyderabad

UK873 BOM0700 – 0830HYD 737 D
UK874 HYD0905 – 1025BOM 737 D

UK877 BOM0855 – 1020HYD 320 D
UK878 HYD1055 – 1230BOM 320 D

Vistara operated UK877/878 for a few days earlier with a 737-800.

Daily Mumbai – Chandigarh

UK651 BOM1330 – 1600IXC 320 D
UK652 IXC1635 – 1905BOM 320 D

Daily Mumbai – Bengaluru

UK849 BOM1405 – 1545BLR 320 D
UK850 BLR1625 – 1810BOM 320 D

Daily Mumbai – Kolkata

UK775 BOM1105 – 1400CCU 737 D
UK776 CCU1440 – 1725BOM 737 D

All of these flights are bookable till July 31, 2019. Ahmedabad – Mumbai was Vistara’s second route but they pulled out of it six months later. It is good to see Vistara back on this route even if it is on a temporary basis.

VT-TNN, Vistara’s all economy A320neo will start flying on 2x daily Delhi-Kochi route from June 13, 2019. The 3 class A320 freed up from that rotation will be utilised on BOM-AMD-BOM-HYD-BOM-IXC-BOM-AMD-BOM rotation.

With this expansion, Vistara will now offer 6x daily flights on Mumbai-Bengaluru, 3x daily flights on Mumbai-Hyderabad and 3x daily flights on Mumbai-Kolkata routes. According to CNBC, around 479 slots of a total 766 slots held by Jet Airways has been distributed temporarily.

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. With this expansion, Vistara has till now utilised 42 slots (21 flight pairs) at Mumbai airport. They have slots to add 3 more flight pairs.

There was a deadline set by the Government to utilise the temporary Jet Airways slots made available to other airlines. Vistara did a fantastic job to add a new fleet type altogether in such a short period of time to ensure that they do not lose the precious slots at Mumbai which were made available to them.

Will you book one of the new flights introduced by Vistara?

(HT: Sakshay Bhatia)