India’s Vistara defers B787, A320neo deliveries

Vistara (UK, Delhi Int’l) is in the process of deferring the delivery of its outstanding Airbus and Boeing commitments, Chief Commercial Officer Vinod Kannan told Bloomberg News last week.

“We are spacing out our deliveries and pushing some to next year,” he said in an interview. “There have been commercial discussions to see how we can better match delivery stream to the projected demand.”

Although the carrier, a 51/49 joint venture between India’s Tata Group and Singapore Airlines Group, has so far taken delivery of two B787-9s, it has delayed the arrival of its four remaining B787-9s by 12 to 15 months. According to the ch-aviation fleets advanced module, VT-TSH (msn 66528) is slated to arrive in April 2022, followed by VT-TSN (msn 66529) in June. After that, msn 66530 and 66531 will arrive in August and December 2022, respectively. Vistara owns all four.

Kannan highlighted, however, that given plans to expand further into the intercontinental market, Vistara may either re-equip its existing B787s with crew-rest areas or seek out from lessors, aircraft already equipped with them.

“The current aircraft aren’t equipped with crew bunks required for cabin crew and for pilots to have horizontal rest,” he said. “There are aircraft available if we want to lease them with these specifications already built in.”

Concerning the Europeans, with whom Vistara has twelve A320-200Ns directly outstanding alongside a further 15 due via lessors, Kannan said talks with Airbus and lessors were ongoing over a possible reduction in costs or adjustments of payment timetables. Vistara’s existing fleet of thirty A320neo and three A321-200NXs are leased from third parties that include ALC Blarney Aircraft (one A320neo), Air Lease Corporation (one A320neo and three A321neo), Avolon (eight A320neo), BOC Aviation (eleven A320neo), and GECAS (eight A320neo). It is also expecting two A321-200Ns.

Given travel restrictions in place resulting from surging COVID numbers, Kannan said Vistara is operating at about 60% of its domestic pre-pandemic capacity. However, under India’s special air bubble arrangements with over 27 countries, Vistara can serve Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Germany.

Plans to expand into the US market by September, however, are in limbo, with no firm commitments given as yet.