While this was not the story I thought I would be writing today, this is the story I have to write today. For the better part of the day, I tried to reach out to Vistara on their Platinum members helpline, which I could not because calls would be dropped within a minute without getting through to a human.

It turns out the contact centre of Vistara is in a meltdown right now because the airline has executed a whole lot of cancellations late last week, to the tune of over 50 flights per day as per sources, which, for a small airline like them, is a lot of their capacity. Here are some of those people taking to Twitter:

@airvistara got an email 6 hours before my flight telling me it is cancelled. Have connecting flights in which I will now miss and no one who we can speak to in the UK. Can someone please help. Awful customer service. #Vistara #cancelled

— missmudhar@hotmail.con (@missmudhar) January 30, 2022

@airvistara Cancelations and Rescheduling moments before flight and customer care going totally MiA. Is this the "new feeling" you always talk about?

— Aniketh Kulkarni (@notsofunnyketh) January 30, 2022

@airvistara guys it’s impossible to reach you .. even if I am so called platinum member .. your standards are just going down n down .. soon u will be part of history

— Summit Grover (@summitgrover) January 30, 2022

@airvistara Major itinerary changes done without my consent & now customer care hasn’t been responding – on hold from last 2hours. I see multiple others also facing same issue. What is happening with your operations? Absolute worst experience. Kindly help address this urgently.

— Vibhor Bhargava (@vibhorbhargava4) January 30, 2022

@airvistara @TataCompanies I have booked a flight from Ahmedabad to Bhubaneswar.
One of the connecting flights from Delhi to Bhubaneswar is cancelled. HOW DO YOU THINK I WILL GO FROM DELHI NOW ?
what is this irresponsible behavior?

Please cater to this issue immediately asap. pic.twitter.com/0ajEWe7kWI

— Shibasish prusty (@ShibasishPrusty) January 29, 2022

@airvistara multiple calls whr I hav been on hold fr more dan 45 mins, tweets, dms's, e-mail later, still no response frm Vistara. Is dis a result of @airindiain takeover? Will #vistara customers suffer now. @DGCAIndia @JM_Scindia @SingaporeAir @TataCompanies pic.twitter.com/GgsWx9o9Xv

— lopamudra (@lopsy18) January 30, 2022

While my DMs are full of people who have had cancelled flights asking for advice, the airline has not been dishing out replacement flights when they are cancelling flights by themselves, and they don’t have self-service options where you can rebook your flights too. This is why everyone is heading to their call centre, which has been woefully understaffed for such a requirement.

People have been getting some crazy routings, which I might accept but others won’t.

So @airvistara canceled my flight from Blr to Goa and thought it was okay put me on a flight via Delhi with a 12 hour layover without my consent! And sent me an email that looks like this. pic.twitter.com/LJPLg5Ykgj

— Habeeb Baig (@baig_habeeb) January 30, 2022

@airvistara For a straight forward journey from Chandigarh to Hyderabad, which would’ve taken me less than 3 hours, #Vistara wants me to travel from Chandigarh to Bangalore to Delhi to Hyderabad! Absolute shambles!

— Gaurav Mittal (@gauravmittle) January 30, 2022

Unfortunately, Gaurav here has not received any support from the airline yet.

What seems to be causing more confusion has been a message that many people have been getting on their bookings with Vistara, about “flight might be disrupted”. Vistara has been sending out messages to people about their flights being prone to changes, or cancellations. However, those flights operate per plan. A ton of people got those messages, including yours truly.

It popped up on my Hyderabad – Delhi flight I flew yesterday, for instance, when I went in to retrieve a copy of the ticket a few days ago.

This message has been going out to people for over a week without any explanations offered, so these folk add to the queue of those looking for a resolution by calling the cont. Remember, not everyone is supposed to know cryptic airline policies, and these are not even cryptic, these are imaginary.

@airvistara : What does this mean ? pic.twitter.com/Z298Ol6iIt

— Amrinder Singh (@Amrinder0305) January 23, 2022

https://twitter.com/Siddhartha_MCFC/status/1485572617620787201?s=20&t=qrCemdbazvUErpLxj-xMPQ

 

If you have a trip with Vistara in February 2022, please keep an eye on your tickets. Flights are being cancelled and clubbed, so you might have been put on a different flight without your knowledge, or you might be left without a flight, for which you need to contact them to get a replacement flight.

The Press Trust of India got a statement from Vistara, which said,

After a sharp decline in demand for air travel, due to the surge in COVID-19 numbers and restrictions imposed by various state governments, we are observing marginal increase in traffic in February compared to the previous month. However, in view of the volatility, we continue to closely monitor the situation and adjust capacity to demand.

With the objective of minimising inconvenience to our customers, we are offering waiver of change fee for one-time rescheduling on all direct bookings with travel until 31 March 2022. We are also assisting the impacted customers with rescheduling, refunds etc., as applicable. We have also advised and empowered our travel agent partners to extend support to customers, as and when required.

Unfortunately, the Vistara statement is incorrect, because Vistara is offering a one-time change on all bookings, not just those from direct channels. The circular Vistara refers to is reproduced below and was first published by us on January 11, 2022.

Bottomline

If you are scheduled to travel with Vistara in February 2022, keep an eye on your tickets, as the airline is cancelling a tonne of flights across their network. If your tickets are cancelled, you are eligible for a rebooking, so please reach out to the airline accordingly.

Have you heard about a cancelled flight from Vistara? Please do share any instances here. 

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