The airfares for 2024 Tet flights quoted by air carriers on December 11 continued to be high, while tickets for some routes are sold out. Many passengers are worried that they won’t be able to book tickets to return to their hometown this Tet holiday, while others have to rethink their travel plans, or book train tickets to save money.

The tickets for Vietnam Airlines’ flights available from February 8 to February 14, 2024, or the fifth day of the New Lunar Year, are surprisingly high. Passengers now can book tickets for Vietnam Airlines’ HCM City - Hanoi flights departing at night or early in the morning and though departure time is unfavorable, they still have to pay VND5.8 million for return tickets. If they want a more favorable departure time, they will have to pay VND7.2 million.

The good news is that there is still a high number of seats for passengers, because HCM City - Hanoi is the busiest route and air carriers provide many flights between the two largest cities, not only on Tet holiday but also on ordinary days. However, the bad news is that they have to pay one and a half or double the usual price.

Tickets for flights from HCM City to Vinh City (Nghe An) and Thanh Hoa are not easy to find. Passengers can only get tickets with departure at night. Economy tickets have sold out, and there are only business class tickets available.

An airfare of nearly VND7 million is now quoted for HCM City – Hai Phong flights, while there are only some Vietnam Airlines’ seats on HCM City – Van Don route on February 6, 8, 10, priced at VND6.75-8.238 million.

There are no more tickets for HCM City – Quy Nhon flights on peak days, December 6-8, but there are still some seats left on Vietnam Airlines’ and Bamboo Airways’ flights on February 9, priced at VND2.4 million. 

The tickets for return flights after Tet, on February 13-16, 2024 are running out. Only several tickets are available at the high price of VND4.5 million.   

Tickets are running out and getting more expensive day by day, especially flights from HCM City to Quy Nhon, Vinh, Thanh Hoa and Chu Lai (Quang Ngai).

Mai Thu Hong in Binh Thanh district, HCM City, estimated that her family of four members will have to pay VND24-25 million to fly to Hanoi and VND16 million if they take the SE8 train. She decided to buy train tickets, but the tickets also were out. Finally, the family will have to go by car, which will take far more time. 

According to the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV), travel demand always increases sharply on Tet days and favorable hours, so air tickets have become more expensive. 

However, the watchdog agency said that the airfares quoted by airlines are not higher than the ceiling levels, and that the airfares for 2024 Tet flights are equal to those in 2023 Tet.

The problem is that high air travel demand is only seen in departure flights, while return flights don’t have that many passengers. Therefore, air carriers have to set high airfares to cover expenses of empty return flights.

The reports from air carriers show that booked seats on flights from HCM City to northern cities/provinces have accounted for 40-50 percent, while the figure is just 10 percent on flights back from northern cities/provinces to HCM City.

Another reason behind the high airfares this year, according to airlines, is the decrease in the number of airplanes. Only Vietnam Airlines and Vietjet Air have kept their fleets stable, while Bamboo Airways, Vietravel Airlines and Pacific Airlines all have scaled down their fleets.

Bamboo Airways, which is undergoing restructuring, for example, has reduced the number of airplanes from 30 to 15 (as of the end of October), while Pacific Airlines now has eight and Vietravel three airplanes.

In order to provide more flights during Tet days, Bamboo Airways has signed a contract on leasing two Airbus A320/A321, which will help increase transport capacity by 20 percent.

The air carrier has mostly increased the frequency of flights on key routes of Hanoi -HCM City, HCM City/Hanoi – Da Nang, and HCM City - Vinh/Thanh Hoa/Hai Phong.

Vietnam Airlines Group has announced that it will provide 550 flights more with more than 100,000 seats. As such, 2.1 million seats will be available for 10,700 flights during Tet days, from January 25 to February 24.

Ngoc Ha