Vistara flight cancellation rate highest in Feb

The airline cancelled 2.28% of its total number of flights during the reporting month as against an industry average of 0.6%

The newly-launched Tata-SIA joint venture carrier Vistara cancelled more flights than any other domestic carrier in February, says DGCA data.

The third full service carrier after national airline Air India and Jet Airways, Vistara also operated over 40% seats vacant in its aircraft during a period in which some of the other airlines reported a seat factor as high as 89.7%.

As per the data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation today, Vistara cancelled 2.28% of its total number of flights during the reporting month as against an industry average of 0.6%.

Vistara was operating from four airports -- Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Goa -- during the period under review with the last stop added to its network on February 20.

The airline was closely followed by Jet Airways subsidiary JetLite, whose cancellation rate was 1.86% while AirAsia India, the domestic arm of the Malaysian carrier, cancelled 1.50% of its total flights during the month.

No-frills carrier IndiGo had the lowest cancellation rate of only 0.15%.

The overall cancellation rate for the scheduled domestic airlines stood at 0.60%, which was on the lower side compared to earlier periods due to resumption of clear weather at airports in northern India, DGCA added.

Vistara managed to fill only 58.6% seats in its aircraft in February as against an average load factor of 81.16 achieved by the carriers.

During this period, Jet Airways and JetLite reported the highest seat occupancy at 89.5 and 89.7%, respectively, followed by IndiGo with 88% load factor.

The seat occupancy for the two other budget carriers -- SpiceJet and GoAir -- was 85.9 and 85.6% while Air India also reported a high load factor of 83.9% in February.