Vistara CEO apologises to pilots for taxing schedules, seeks support
Battling a surge of flight cancellations following unrest among pilots ahead of the merger with Air India, Vistara CEO Vinod Kannan held a town hall meeting where he apologised to pilots for ‘taxing schedules’ and sought their support in resolving concerns.
Mr. Kannan sought to address rostering issues that were resulting in long working hours for the pilots, and stressful combinations of flights, and assured them the airline would take measures to ensure a better worklife ba
lance even if it entailed a commercial hit.
“We will take steps to make roster less taxing in a more rigorous fashion,” Mr. Kannan said during the 25minute town hall where he also fielded questions directly from the pilots.
He said since March 31 the airline had seen more than 150 flight cancellations and 200 flight delays of longer than two hours but said that proactive cancellation of flights on April 3 and 4 was expected to bring back normalcy. He said the cancellations would continue till the end of the month to create a pilot buffer.
He denied that a section of pilots had reported sick to protest the new pay structure announced in midFebruary and instead he sought to blame ATC delays, groundings due to bird hits and engine failure, and a hectic roster where pilots had exceeded their maximum limit of permissible flight hours as well as a lack of a pilot buffer, which he said had “snowballed” into a large number of cancellations.
Instances of pilots calling in sick at the end of a financial year were common as crew want to utilise unused leave, which he said was “the final straw that broke the camel’s back”.
On the contentious new pay structure, the CEO said while some pilots ‘were unhappy’, the move was in the interest of the “wider community”. He, however, invited pilots to convey their concerns directly to him and assured a reply.