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The Tata-Singapore Airline joint venture airline, Vistara commenced operations at Bangalore today, a little over five months after it first commenced operations.
As reported earlier, from today the airline commenced daily flights from the tech capital of the country to the the national capital New Delhi and the financial capital Mumbai.
Bangalore Aviation was at hand to capture the arrival of VT-TTC at Bengaluru airport as it performed the inaugural flight UK889 from New Delhi.
Bangalore is the tenth destination for the airline and the second in south India after arch rival Hyderabad, much to the chagrin of the citizens of the third largest airport in India. In fairness to the airline, it has been limited by route dispersal guidelines and a lack of aircraft. The airline is already utilising its aircraft an average of 11 hours 40 minutes per day which is high for a domestic only full service carrier, and impressive considering its 96%+ on time performance.
The airline is expected to increase capacity to the city only after it receives its seventh, eighth and ninth Airbus A320s once a month starting September 2015.
You can read our review of Vistara’s premium economy class and review of Vistara’s business class.
LOL I didn’t realize HYD and BLR were rivals! That’s amusing. Why are they rivals, exactly, though? HYD is decades behind BLR when it comes to the business traffic and GDP output, anyway. BLR basically wins in every single metric (I mean, come on, BLR can sustain mainline service to Germany, France, the UK, Hong Kong, China, Singapore, and many other places, while HYD can’t!). But ah well, some rivalries were never anything short of amusing!
I think Vistara just saw that HYD would provide a better chance to utilize its aircraft while also getting the largest load factors. Think about it, which is worse served? Both BLR-BOM and BLR-DEL are absolute bloodbaths given how many airlines operate on both of these routes and how high the frequencies are, but if anything, both HYD-DEL and HYD-BOM are underserved. I think Vistara recognized this fact and opted to maximize revenues in the short-term; I don’t think it is anything antagonistic against BLR at all, but hey, that’s just me.
But it does beg the question of when Vistara will operate into CCU and MAA. Both CCU and MAA are larger cities than both BLR and HYD, and until this past year, MAA was the third busiest airport in the country for the past 70-odd years. If anything, I’m shocked that Vistara has shown absolutely no indication of serving MAA at all in the near future. MAA generates a lot of corporate traffic to especially BOM, so it would seem that this would fit right into Vistara’s network, but I guess not. CCU is less of a prize than the other three, but it still shocks me that Vistara is operating to metros smaller than CCU (BLR and HYD) whereas every other airline operates to CCU (save GoAir, I think).
Another thing you have to ponder is when Vistara will operate the BLR-HYD routes. I know its hub is DEL, and it is trying hard to operate a true hub-and-spoke model rather than the point-to-point model that all other Indian airlines operate, but it seems a shame that this route isn’t being operated by them given the amount of IT traffic that goes between these cities; another seemingly perfect fit for Vistara! Maybe they’ll extend the HYD flight from DEL down to BLR in the future; it just seems like too juicy a fruit for them to ignore for too long. It seems that you believe HYD and BLR to be “rivals”, or whatever, but you have to wonder why they haven’t tapped into that high-yielding IT traffic between the two cities just yet!
Anyway, interesting (and amusing) article. Looking forward to seeing Vistara’s next moves. Still shocked that they are flying to GOI and AMD before MAA, BLR, and CCU, but hey, everyone is full of surprises.
One quick question for you, though, Devesh: It seems, based on your articles, that HYD doesn’t generate a lot of revenue or passengers. Is this true, and if so, why? I would have thought that being the “Second Silicon Valley of India”, the DRDO hub of the country, and the hub of all things Indian pharmaceuticals, HYD would be quite a formidable force for high-yielding traffic and/or lots of economy traffic. And HYD witnessed 20% passenger growth last year, same as BLR, putting it right under CCU and probably surpassing it come next year, so I’m wondering why HYD is considering to be lowest-yielding metro of the six? I’m not trying to be combatative or anything, just curious. I mean, it does make you wonder why SpiceJet picked HYD for its Q400 hub rather than BLR if HYD is really that much worse.
Would love to hear your thoughts on all this!
I am from Hyderabad. But my opinion :
Hyderabad is not far behind Bangalore. Even by GDP estimates the difference is about $9bn. Just because city doesn’t have much international traffic doesn’t mean its in stone age. Hyderabad airport is also much better than Bangalore.
Bangalore jobs are of like development level but where as Hyderabad provides more support jobs. Hence less traffic.
Even the demographics of Hyderabad is different. Most of the people are from Telugu states only.
This is an aviation blog, and as such, I was only talking about aviation-related topics. Let’s stay on topic. I meant no disrespect to the city of Hyderabad; I am originally from Hyderabad as well. But I recognize the traffic flows, industries, and economies of both cities well enough to objectively judge that in the aviation realm, BLR leads by a longshot.
I would like to hear any of your opinions on the points I brought up, though, if you have any, such as why Vistara still have shown no indication of serving either MAA or CCU despite those being much bigger metros and why it hasn’t taken advantage of the IT traffic between BLR and HYD yet.
CCU has almost nil high paying pax, business pax or not…. the catchment area of CCU includes some of the poorest parts of the country. UK needs more time in the business before it can afford to ply on CCU routes that will invariably have empty front rows if you get my point.
Vistara should start PNQ-BLR flights too. Surprised that this route is missing.
I feel that BOM-PNQ is a more vital route missing at the moment. I know that the cities are really close, but the transportation between them isn’t anything of note, and the amount of corporate traffic out of PNQ into BOM seems perfect for Vistara.