VietNamNet Bridge - Representatives of the national carrier Vietnam Airlines have admitted that theft on its flights is on the rise.

According to statistics, 28 cases of theft occurred on Vietnam Airlines flights in 2012 and the figure was 15 cases for 2013. So far this year, nine cases have occurred and the thieves were all passengers.

Notably, of the nine cases in which the thieves were caught in the act, five were Chinese.

Most recently, on March 31, a Chinese passenger on a flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Hong Kong constantly changed his seat, attracting attention from the flight attendants, who then detected that this passenger had stolen $710 from the luggage of another passenger.

On March 1, a Chinese man named Gui Guoliang, 41, was caught red-handed while stealing the purse of an Australian Vietnamese passenger on a flight from Singapore to Ho Chi Minh City.

On January 19, Vietnam Airlines flight attendant shot a video clip of a theft by two Chinese men on a flight. They were identified as Zhang Jiang and Ren Guanghan, both born in 1973.

On January 16, a Vietnam Airlines waitress caught a 41-year-old Chinese man in the act of stealing $700 from an Indonesian passenger, on a flight from Indonesia to HCM City.

Airport employees steal assets of passengers

A suitcase with the broken lock.

Passengers are not the only culprits in airline-related thefts.

In 2009, a luggage docker at Noi Bai International Airport, Hanoi, was caught stealing from the luggage of passengers on a Bangkok-Hanoi flight of Air Asia. The items were an Olympus camera and two memory cards.

In July 2008, two dockers of NCTS, a private transport company, stole Vinaphone phone cards from two parcels sent by air through the Noi Bai Airport. The same month, three workers of NCTS stole ten mobile phones from a parcel of a passenger.

However, the biggest case is the [attempted] theft of nearly $1 million in 2007. On November 12, 2007, at Noi Bai airport, Techcombank sent two parcels of foreign currencies by air from Vietnam to Singapore. A worker named Luu Quang Thang took one parcel and hid it in the room for missing goods.

Recently, a passenger on a Vietnam Airlines flight from Yangon (Myanmar) to Hanoi claimed that the lock of her suitcase had been broken.

Earlier, a passenger on a flight from the U.S. to Vietnam on Korea's Asiana Airlines lost two suitcases at Tan Son Nhat Airport. One day later he found the suitcases, but the locks of both were broken and many luxury fashion items, worth over $8000, were gone.

In May 2009, a passenger on an Indochina Airlines flight from Da Nang to HCM City discovered his two suitcases had been opened. Lost were two necklaces and a Sony camera.

Vu Diep