VietNamNet Bridge - Vietnam’s airlines have opened new international air routes and are running more sale promotions, especially to key tourism markets.

Vietnam's airlines have increased international air routes

Vietjet, the private air carrier owned by the Vietnamese dollar billionaire Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, has begun sales for newly opened routes to Tokyo (Japan) and Busan (South Korea) with airfares from zero dong.

It has also offered 670,000 tickets with preferential prices for flights to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan (China), Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia and Hong Kong (China). The departure times are between May 14 and December 31, 2019.

The national flag air carrier Vietnam Airlines announced the launch of the ‘biggest program of the year’, on March 15-24, applied to more than 90 air routes. 

Passengers have opportunities to buy return tickets at prices from $9, or VND209,000, for flights with wide-body Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 aircraft to depart on April 1 – October 31, 2019. The destinations are in Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, Europe and Australia.

Vietnam’s airlines have opened many international air routes, especially non-stop routes to tourist sites in Taiwan, Japan and South Korea.

Vietjet, for example, opened three non-stop routes to Japan within three months, from November 2018 to January 2019.

In October 2018, Vietnam Airlines opened non-stop Da Nang – Osaka route with seven flights a week, raising the total number of its air routes to Japan to 11. 

Regarding the South Korean market, Vietjet has just launched the Phu Quoc Island – Seoul, with which the air carrier now provide flights on eight routes to South Korea. 

It is expected that Vietjet will also fly HCMC (Vietnam) – Tokyo (Japan) from July 2019 and on Nha Trang – Busan in the same month.

According to Vo Huy Cuong, deputy head of the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV), the number of international flights to Vietnam has risen quickly, overloading airports.

In 2018, 38 million passengers went through Tan Son Nhat, which has designed capacity of 25 million passengers. Fifty eight air carriers had flights to Vietnam in 2018 and the figure is expected to rise to over 60 this year.

Cuong noted that Vietnam’s airlines increased international air routes because they bring higher revenue. Short-distance domestic flights are less attractive because the ticket prices must not be higher than ceiling prices.

The ceiling prices were set in 2015, when the air fuel price was low. The dollar price, operation costs, labor costs and aircraft charter fees all have increased sharply since then.

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