When Vistara’s flight UK 819 left boarding gate 39A at Delhi airport’s Terminal 3 Monday afternoon headed for Bengaluru, it had on board a very special passenger — the airline’s 50 millionth passenger.
A moment of celebration for an airline that is checking all the boxes, winning best airline awards as well as high ratings from passengers online and off — and yet could cease to exist in a few months time.
For this ‘sunset airline’, as some are vaunt to describe it, future is, at best, uncertain — since the takeover of state-run airline Air India by its bosses, the Tatas, it was announced late last year that Vistara will be merged into Air India to become the Tata group’s flagship full-service carrier, a process that is set to be complete within coming March.
However, a notice issued by the Competition Commission of India (CCI, India’s anti-monopoly body) this weekend could pour cold water over Bombay House’s plans — according to reports, CCI has issued a show cause notice to the Tata Group to respond within 30 days on why an investigation into the proposed merger not be conducted.
The CCI has a point — the dominance of low-cost carrier Indigo on one side (it presently controls more than 60 per cent of the domestic aviation market) and the Tata bouquet of four airlines (Air India and Vistara which are to be merged; Air India Express and AirAsia India which are to be merged, respectively) on the other side is perhaps not really good news for the domestic flyer who’s been lamenting sky rocketing air fares for some time now. In May, Air India had a 9.4 per cent market share to Vistara's 9 per cent.
In addition, Air India and Vistara are the only two full-service domestic carriers in the country right now, and their merger would mean there would be essentially one single, monopoly carrier as far as full-fledged domestic airlines are considered, with Jet Airways revival still remaining postponed and seemingly uncertain for the time being.
03/07/2023 K. Sunil Thomas/The Week
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