Air India will operate ex-Vistara Airbus A320neo aircraft on five metro-to-metro routes and optimise its flights, spreading them throughout the day.
The move will come into effect from December 1 and will see the airline take on IndiGo, which is introducing a business class product on metro routes. Vistara aircraft have a three-class configuration - business, premium economy and economy.
Deployment on five routes
The ex-Vistara aircraft will be deployed on the Delhi-Mumbai, Delhi-Bengaluru, Delhi-Hyderabad, Mumbai-Bengaluru and Mumbai-Hyderabad routes, said the company.
Air India said it offers over a thousand weekly flights on these routes. It is also the capacity leader on the Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Bengaluru routes.
“The merger of Vistara with Air India has unlocked new opportunities to improve our customer offering. By combining the strengths of both full-service carriers, we will consolidate our best narrow-body offering on routes where there is a demand for a high-frequency, full-service product. We will progressively expand the coverage to more routes as Air India inducts new aircraft and completes the retrofit of our legacy narrow-body fleet during 2025,” its CEO and Managing Director, Campbell Wilson, said .