Vistara takes delivery of its seventh Airbus A320 aircraft

New Delhi: Tata-SIA joint venture carrier Vistara Tuesday took delivery of its seventh aircraft as the airline plans to scale up flight operations from the forthcoming winter schedule.

The seventh aircraft, an Airbus A320, was delivered to Vistara today. The carrier would take two more similar planes by the year end to take its total fleet size to nine Airbus A320s, the airlines said.

"We are elated to announce the addition of the seventh aircraft to our current fleet. We have received an overwhelming response from our customers who are asking for more choices of destinations and increased frequencies.

"It is, therefore, imperative for us to constantly expand, innovate and improvise to continue to provide a personalised and seamless travel experience to them," Vistara chief executive Phee Teik Yeoh said.

The Tata Group joint venture airline was committed to serve the domestic market, he said, adding, "we will add two more aircrafts to our fleet that will increase our footprint by 50 per cent in the next three months."

Vistara, in which Tata Group holds 51 per cent stake and the rest are with Singapore Airlines, had commenced operations in January this year with flights to Mumbai and Ahmedabad from its New Delhi base.

At present, the country's third full service carrier, after the state-run Air India and private airline Jet Airways, operates 293 weekly flights to across 12 destinations including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Goa, Guwahati and Bagdogra.

It has already announced its plan to add Bhubaneswar and Varanasi in its network from next month.

As part of its winter schedule, Vistara has sought to double its flights compared to the number of flights operated by it in the on-going summer schedule.

The winter schedule of airlines in India comes into effect from last Sunday of October and lasts up to March.