August is turning out to be a big month for Vistara. After taking off in 2015, the airline qualified to fly abroad in 2018 after taking delivery of their 20th aircraft. They only received permission to fly abroad in March 2019. Just last month, the airline started to move forward on the plans to fly international, after digressing for a bit cornering more flights in India, largely Mumbai with acquired 737 aircraft. Colombo’s terror attacks also put their plans in a bit of a twist as their first international destination.
Now, Vistara is all set to launch their maiden international flight, to Singapore, today, on August 6, 2019 from Delhi. The second international flight to Singapore will be launched, from Mumbai, a day later. Both flights will be daily operations to Singapore, and will be operated by the 737 aircraft, to be later swapped by newer A320/1 equipment of Vistara as they start to come on board later this year.
On the back of this, Vistara announced the launch of their second international flight from Mumbai to Dubai on August 21, 2019. When we wrote about those flights, we wrote about the upcoming launch of flights to Bangkok as well as Kathmandu.
Today, they made another announcement, about the launch of the Vistara flights from Delhi to Bangkok. Vistara has opened bookings on August 6, 2019 for these daily flights between Delhi and Bangkok, which will be operated with the Airbus A320neo aircraft of the airline. This will make Vistara the first airline to offer Premium Economy for travel between India and Thailand. The timings of this new flight will be:
UK121 DEL0825 – 1415BKK 320 D
UK122 BKK1515 – 1715DEL 320 D
The Vistara Dubai flight practically turns around in Bangkok in one hour, which is a good thing. The timings of the flight look good for those who are visiting Bangkok for work or pleasure.
Ticket bookings on this route are already open, and you will be able to book them on the airline’s website, and also on the website of OTAs such as MakeMyTrip.com.
Subsequent to this route, Vistara will also launch flights to Kathmandu and Colombo in the coming days as well.
Bottomline
Vistara is going to be the airline to watch on the international routes in the days ahead. As the only new full-service airline in India flying abroad, they will sure bring a new product/experience on board which is something not seen before.
What are the other routes you think Vistara will fly in the coming days apart from those announced?
This is a long shot and probably won’t happen until they increase Delhi/ Mumbai to double daily, but Chennai-Singapore/ Bangalore are logical.
– SQ operates premium heavy A350s from LAX and SIN that arrive in Singapore around 6 AM that currently require a 14 hour layover to connect to South India. Further, even the flights from SFO/ LAX (via Narita) that arrive in the evening do not have premium economy, creating product inconsistency. Adding a morning departure creates consistency whille allowing morning and evening departure options for SFO/ LAX and BLR/MAA travellers. This could also enable SQ to cut their Silk Air AM flights but probably requires a much more extensive codeshare agreement w UK to capture the early morning arrivals in to Changi from Australia as well.
* I mean AM departures from SIN to BLR/ MAA