VietJet is a Vietnamese low-cost airline with a fleet of 56 Airbus A320 family aircraft. They have 125 Airbus A321-200/neo aircraft on order apart from 200 Boeing 737Max aircraft. They launched operations in 2011 and have had an impressive growth rate as is with almost all LCCs. VietJet is also known as the Bikini Airline and is more famous for their annual Bikini Calendar.
VietJet announced their plan for an India foray back in February 2017. They planned on launching 3x weekly flights to connect Ho Chi Minh City with New Delhi from July 2017. Then there was a radio silence for a year. In March 2018, they announced that they will launch a 4x weekly flight on Ho Chi Minh City-New Delhi route from July 2018 with an Airbus A320 aircraft.
July came and went by with no flights being started. In July 2018, there was some chatter that Vietjet would finally launch 4x weekly flights from November 2018. Then during a bilateral meeting in November between India and Vietnam, there was a mention of VietJet starting the route soon. Nothing so far.
As of now, New Delhi has been added as a destination on their website since June 2018. But the route isn’t a part of their flight schedule nor has it been loaded in the GDS.
On a side note, back in the day, Jet Airways used to operate a direct flight to Vietnam which used to stop at Bangkok. They discontinued it later due to poor loads. What I wanted to point out is, they initially launched it as Delhi-Bangkok-Ho Chi Minh City only to change it to Mumbai-Bangkok-Ho Chi Minh City. The reason for this change was more passengers were coming in from Mumbai than Delhi (almost 5 times). Maybe VietJet should factor in this.
VietJet does have plans to connect to multiple cities in India with the incoming A321neos (they currently have 4 of them). Let’s see when they actually launch Indian operations.
Bottomline
This is similar to Air Tanzania case where they even added a timetable for their flights to Mumbai. Only time will tell if they launch this route or not. Around 1.1 lakh Indian tourist visited Vietnam last year and it is expected that it will increase to 1.7 lakh this year. With no non-stop flights between India and Vietnam, it seems a perfect opportunity to launch flights now. VietJet will face stiff competition from one-stop flights as there are many.
Are you eagerly waiting for a non-stop flight to Vietnam?
You know, Vietjet announced Vladivostok back in 2014, and it still has launched. So I am not surprised by inaction on the Delhi front.
This seems to be a somewhat unpredictable and unreliable airline with many “ghost” flights and so forth.
Perhaps IndiGo will be a better bet on the LCC front, and dare I say someone should suggest to Air India as well, because there should be good government and business traffic that would desire a more comfortable premium cabin.
Here is a CAPA analysis:
https://centreforaviation.com/analysis/reports/vietnam-india-markets-rapid-growth-vietjet-first-with-nonstops-407377
Sorry, I mean to say: VVO (Vladivostok) has NOT launched!
Would you know what the bilateral entitlements are for Vietnam?