According to him, the buffer situation in terms of pilots is stabilising and there is no cause for concern about last-minute flight cancellations.”From Monday, whatever flights are in the system, they should be operating,” Kannan said as he sought to assure travellers that flights will not be cancelled at the last minute. As part of reduced operations, Kannan said the airline has cut 20-25 daily flights.Vistara is to operate more than 300 flights daily in the ongoing summer schedule.The airline cancelled some flights on Friday.”We are now working on the schedule for May, and we will try and optimise it to come to usual kind of operations (we) expect normal operations (by May),” Kannan said.”On behalf of all the 6,500 staff, we are very sorry for what happened. We all stand ready to bring the situation back to normal and it is happening quite fast,” he added.Vistara is apologising to customers who have been affected by the flight disruptions, Kannan said and stressed that it is not kind of service the airline provides.”We have been reaching out to all customers (affected), apologise for the disruptions,” Kannan said.With respect to pilots, he said it is a question of being more aware about what their feedback is, “we are reviewing their concerns and will discuss it”.Further, he said the airline will continue to have discussions with pilots to address their concerns.Vistara, a joint venture between Tatas and Singapore Airlines, has 6,500 staff, including 1,000 pilots and 2,500 cabin crew.The airline is in the process of merging with Air India.Over the weekend of March 31 to April 1, Vistara had a number of disruptions.Earlier this week, aviation regulator DGCA asked the airline to submit a daily report on flight cancellations and delays.”Over the last few months, we have added a number of aircraft, we have grown significantly and therefore, we have been pushing our resources quite to the limit.”From a rostering perspective, we have stretched the rosters for pilots quite significantly it means that when there were disruptions like bird strikes, engineering issues, there was not enough buffer or resilience which we can call on,” Kannan said.From the planning perspective, he said it was okay, but there were several disruptions in one round in early March and then again towards the end of the month.”Therefore, this caused the whole roster to go haywire that is the main reason (for flight disruptions),” the Vistara chief said.
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