Vistara Becomes First Airline in India to Induct Airbus A321LR, Gets Extended Flying Range

Vistara Airline, a Joint Venture between Tata Group and Singapore International Airlines has inducted India's first Long Range Airbus A321LR aircraft. The full service carrier Vistara continues to expand its fleet and expects to have a total of 70 planes by mid-2024, its chief Vinod Kannan recently said. Out of the total 70 planes, there will also be 10 Airbus A321s and 53 A320 neos for domestic routes, and 7 Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner wide body planes for serving international markets. Among the 53 A320 neos, 10 planes will have all economy class and the rest will have three classes. Currently, the airline has a fleet of 53 aircraft.

The A321LR aircraft has a total of 188 seats in Vistara’s three-class cabin configuration - 12 lie flat seats in Business Class, 24 seats in Premium Economy, and 152 in Economy Class. All seats are equipped with 4-way adjustable headrests, in-seat power/USB charging ports, state-of-the-art In-Flight Entertainment (IFE) system featuring a multimedia library with up to 700 hours of content, and onboard Wi-Fi to accentuate the overall in-flight experience for the passengers. 

Excited to welcome India’s first A321LR as it joins our fleet today! This aircraft provides extended range and is capable of flying routes of up to 4,000 nm. So, get ready to experience the best on India’s best airline as you explore the world.@Airbus @CFM_engines @AirLeaseCorp pic.twitter.com/PwVrDo9e2u — Vistara (@airvistara) February 4, 2023

Vinod Kannan, Chief Executive Officer, Vistara, said, "We are excited to welcome our first A321LR to our growing fleet. This addition reiterates our stronger focus on international expansion, and enables us to offer longer range connectivity to our customers while also maintaining greater fuel efficiency.” Vistara is soon set to be merged with Air India, the former national air carrier. According to him, there are constraints in terms of traffic rights and slots.

"We would love to operate more flights to Dubai, Singapore but those are all constrained by traffic rights. We had to look at other options... We will be looking at more points in the Middle East," he added. "Strong demand which resulted in high load factor and that demand was not turned away due to high fares, (so), we were able to get a very strong revenue performance. The second aspect is that the US dollar and fuel price have been on an increasing trend... We have some sort of scale, we have 53 aircraft. So, obviously unit cost and deployment does reduce to a certain extent," Kannan said.

Further, he said there is also the impact of the deployment of wide-body aircraft and currently Vistara has three such planes in its fleet. "They have been doing extremely well and the demand to Europe has been strong. In fact, flights have been flying with load factors in excess of 85-90 per cent. Therefore, that plays a positive role in the performance of the airline," he added.

With PTI inputs