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SIA seeks “synergies” with joint venture Vistara
May 25th 2018
Singapore Airlines (SIA) is looking for closer cooperation with its Indian joint venture full-service carrier, Vistara. Read More » At last week’s annual results presentation, SIA CEO, Goh Choon Phong, said given the strong traffic volumes between Singapore and India there would be obvious “synergies” between the two carriers.
“They can tap into the traffic that we can feed from Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific,” the SIA chief said. Vistara is a 49:51 joint venture between SIA and Indian conglomerate, Tata Sons.
Vistara has indicated its maiden international service to a yet unnamed destination will be in the second half of this year. The airline has met India’s 20-aircraft minimum fleet requirement that entitles it to apply for international routes. It is expected that Vistara’s first regional destinations will include A320neo flights to Bangkok and Dubai.
The airline is also planning to launch medium- and long-haul flights of “between five to nine hours”, Vistara CEO, Leslie Thng, has said. The airline does not have suitable aircraft for flights of such length. The Delhi-based carrier could be tapping SIA’s large order backlog, including A350 and B787 aircraft. It operates 13 A320ceo and seven A320neo.
Vistara will be competing in the medium-to long-haul market with Air India, Jet Airways and soon low-cost carrier (LCC), IndiGo Airlines. The latter is reportedly in the final stages of ordering up to 50 330neo after evaluating the type against the A350 and B787. IndiGo is said to favour the type because of faster delivery times and flight deck commonality with its massive A320 fleet.
The airline code shares with SIA and SilkAir. In the longer term, Vistara is expected also to codeshare with Scoot, the SIA Group’s regional and long-haul LCC. Scoot has a relatively large Indian network, including Singapore to Chennai, Amritsar, Jaipur and Bangalore.
Vistara is forging interline agreements with a growing list of international carriers, including British Airways, Air France, Emirates Airline and Qatar Airways.
