Vistara to reconfigure in favour of economy seats

Vistara launched 13 months ago, with a configuration with 16 seats in Business Class, 36 in Premium Economy, and 96 Economy Seats. The airline. There has been chatter about their plans not working out, with India refusing to pay top dollar for a business class, and a PEY section that often misprices lower than Economy and also is basically the Economy product of other airlines, apart from their slightly higher leg space.

For the past five months, various quarters have predicted that Vistara will go in for a reconfiguration given they are unable to get as much load to break even on a plane as they estimated in the past. The question was if only new planes will have the new configuration, or existing planes as well.

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Vistara Premium Economy

It turns out Vistara will indeed go ahead with reconfiguring their entire fleet into a new configuration, which will be 8 Business Class, 24 Premium Economy & 126 Economy seats, which means a 40% cut on any sort of premium capacity, and a corresponding increase on the Economy section of the plane.

The reconfiguration will be completed on all 9 aircraft, during the period of April to July 2016. The new retrofitted aircraft will first show up on the Delhi – Hyderabad sector in April 2016. Also, all the new aircraft will be fitted with the new configuration announced as well.

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Vistara Economy Class

Of course, there are other improvements up their sleeves which I am waiting to witness as well. For instance, the lounge that is currently getting ready at Delhi and was supposed to be launched in February 2016, and their in-flight entertainment services which were supposed to go wi-fi!

Here is hoping their plans will be further fine tuned when their new CCO joins them tomorrow!

What do you think about the new changes at Vistara?

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About Ajay

Ajay Awtaney is the Founder and Editor of Live From A Lounge (LFAL), a pioneering digital platform renowned for publishing news and views about aviation, hotels, passenger experience, loyalty programs, travel trends and frequent travel tips for the Global Indian. He is considered the Indian authority on business travel, luxury travel, frequent flyer miles, loyalty credit cards and travel for Indians around the globe. Ajay is a frequent contributor and commentator on the media as well, including ET Now, BBC, CNBC TV18, NDTV, Conde Nast Traveller and many other outlets.

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