Vistara is likely to the hike salaries of its pilots and cabin crew from April 1 by eight per cent and six per cent, respectively, said sources. According to two people in the know, this decision was taken during a meeting on Tuesday. “The HR department met with the pilot and cabin crew departments earlier today. The pilots were informed that their salaries will be hiked by eight per cent on their CTC and cabin crew salaries will be hiked by six per cent starting April 1,” said one of the two people businessline spoke with.
The company, however, did not respond to businessline’s query. Vistara has 5,000-plus employees, including 2,500 pilots and cabin crew. The airline has a fleet of 53 aircraft, including 42 Airbus A320neo, six Airbus A321, two Boeing 737-800NG and three Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft, and has flown more than 42 million customers since it started operations.
Vistara is a 51:49 joint venture between Tata Sons Private Limited and Singapore Airlines Limited (SIA). In November 2022, Tata Sons said it would merge Vistara with Air India. As part of the merger transaction, Singapore Airlines (SIA) will invest ₹2,059 crore to get 25.1 per cent in the merged Air India.
The consolidation of Vistara with Air India is expected to be completed by March 2024. However, on multiple occasions, Vinod Kannan, CEO of Vistara has maintained that Vistara will continue to operate as a separate entity until merged.
Since its inception in 2015, for the first time last month, the company said that it had posted a profit. Though, the net profit excluded unrealised foreign currency loss and non-operating income for the quarter ended December 2022.
Addressing the media, Kannan had said that he remains cautiously optimistic about maintaining its profitability in the last quarter of FY23. He had also said that the airline will add seven aircraft to its fleet by the end of this calendar year, taking the total fleet size to 60 aircraft taking the fleet size to 70 by mid-next year.
Tata Sons has four airlines including Air India, AirAsia, Vistara and Air India Express. The group’s total fleet size is 219 aircraft, including AirAsia India 28 airplanes, Vistara’s 54 aircraft, and Air India Express at 24 planes and Air India’s current fleet includes 113 aircraft.