As the dust begins to settle on the COVID-19 crisis, airline executives around the world are revisiting their route maps to decide which city pairings to bring back to life. However this isn’t a task at the top of the in-tray of Vistara CEO Vinod Kannan.
The Indian firm was one of the few carriers that actually added more destinations during the pandemic, amid a bullish expansion programme. As well as opening new routes, the full-service carrier is also bolstering frequencies, upping the stakes in May with its Delhi-London service now flying daily as air travel demand rebounds.
Vistara launched its first scheduled European connection in August 2020 with thrice-weekly flights between Delhi and Heathrow, later adding Paris and Frankfurt to its destination map, bucking the trend of network contractions during the pandemic.
During a recent trip to London, Kannan caught up with Airliner World to share his latest plans and longer term ambitions for the company. The chief executive was in an upbeat mood, describing the British capital as the “crown jewel” in Vistara’s network. Revealing that load factors are currently around 85%,…
