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Tag: bamboo airlines

  • Bamboo Airways names new senior advisor amid restructuring

    Bamboo Airways names new senior advisor amid restructuring

    Sacombank Chairman Duong Cong Minh was appointed senior advisor to the board of directors at Bamboo Airways to support the airline’s restructuring.

    Minh, 62, is also the founder and chairman of property developer Him Lam. His appointment came three days after the airline named a new chairman.

    Minh will be key to the restructuring of Bamboo Airways’ management and expansion, Chairman Nguyen Ngoc Trong said.

    Sacombank was one of the top lenders to Bamboo Airways and its parent company, FLC Group. Hundreds of millions of airline shares were used as collateral for loans at the bank under the reign of ex-chairman Trinh Van Quyet, who was arrested for allegedly manipulating the stock market.

    As of June 30, the group and its subsidiaries had finished paying off their VND1.8 trillion ($76.9 million) debt to Sacombank, according to FLC’s financial statements.

    Bamboo Airways currently operates nearly 170 flights a day on 40 domestic and 12 international routes.

    The carrier plans to continue launching new international services to tourism markets in Asia, Europe and Australia.

    It also plans to increase its fleet to 35 by the end of this year and triple its fleet size to 100 aircraft by 2028.

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  • Vietnamese carrier announces first Vietnam-UK direct flights

    Vietnamese carrier announces first Vietnam-UK direct flights

    Bamboo Airways announced the launch of the first Vietnam-U.K. direct flight routes Sunday in the presence of PM Pham Minh Chinh, in the U.K. for the COP26 meet.

    The airline also confirmed that local firm APG UK will be its representative in the U.K.

    Bamboo Airways chairman Trinh Van Quyet said that the direct flights could commence as early as this year when the resumption of commercial flights between the two countries is allowed.

    The airline said it expects to operate six round trips a week between Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and London; and increase frequency based on demand.

    Bamboo Airways’s direct flights would help cut travel time between Vietnam and the U.K. to around 12 hours, seven hours quicker than flights that require transit.

    The flights are expected to drop off and take passengers at Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 2, connecting Vietnam’s Noi Bai and Tan Son Nhat airports with the U.K.’s largest airport. The Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner will be used for flights on the Vietnam-U.K. routes, the airline said.

    Nguyen Hoang Long, Vietnamese ambassador to the U.K., said opening direct flights between the two countries would boost commerce and people-to-people exchanges and would be particularly beneficial for the Vietnamese community in the U.K.

    APG UK, a passenger and cargo representation company, will support the airline with sales, marketing, and customer support as also issues related to aviation policies and procedures.

    There are currently over 100,000 Vietnamese studying and living in the U.K., and around 60 percent of them are in London. In 2019 alone, the number of tourists from the U.K. traveling to Vietnam reached 315,000, a 105 percent increase from the same period in 2018, according to the General Statistics Office. Among European countries, the U.K. has the second-highest number of visitors to Vietnam, the office added.

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  • Pandemic grounds 39 Vietnam aircraft

    Pandemic grounds 39 Vietnam aircraft

    Vietnam had 39 aircraft, or over 14 percent of its fleet, grounded in the first quarter after a new Covid-19 outbreak cut travel demand.

    Eighteen of the grounded aircraft belonged to national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines, 14 to budget carrier Vietjet, four to Pacific Airlines and three to Bamboo Airways, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV).

    Vietnam’s fleet of 269 aircraft is 13 more than it had last year.

    The country closed the borders and canceled all international flights in March last year, allowing in only certain categories of people with stringent conditions.

    Vietnamese carriers served 5.8 million passengers in the first quarter this year, down 45 percent year-on-year.

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  • Bamboo Airways secures flight slots in London

    Bamboo Airways secures flight slots in London

    Bamboo Airways has got a slot allocated at London’s Heathrow Airport to fly six times a week from Hanoi and HCMC starting in May.

    The flights would be operated using the airline’s long-haul Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft.

    The carrier had stated its intention to fly to the British capital and Frankfurt in Germany in the first quarter of 2021, but was delayed due to the closure of Vietnamese borders to keep out Covid-19.

    It has announced plans to make an initial public offering this year and raise VND6.3 trillion ($2.73 million).

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  • Bamboo Airways licensed to fly directly to the US

    Bamboo Airways licensed to fly directly to the US

    Bamboo Airways has received a permit from the U.S. Department of Transportation to carry passengers and cargo to that country.

    It has been allowed to use the wide-body Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner to fly directly from Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to places like Los Angeles and San Francisco.

    Bamboo Airways is the second airline to get permission after Vietnam Airlines.

    It is set to begin direct service to the U.S. at the end of 2021 or early 2022, and will next seek licenses from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Transportation Security Administration and other relevant agencies in the U.S.

    The FAA granted a Category 1 rating to the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam under its International Aviation Safety Assessment program last February, which meant the latter met safety standards to operate flights to the U.S.

    There are currently no non-stop routes between the two countries, and passengers have to transit through East Asia, taking 18-21 hours in all. A direct flight would bring the travel time down to 14-16 hours.

    Americans are among the top foreign visitors to Vietnam, with 687,226 arrivals last year, while an ethnic Vietnamese population of over 2.1 million in the U.S. is also expected to be a steady source of travel demand.

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  • Vietnamese airlines continue to be plagued by pilot shortage

    Vietnamese airlines continue to be plagued by pilot shortage

    With increasing demand for pilots as they expand, Vietnamese airlines have had to raise salaries, spend more on training and hire foreign pilots. Figures from the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam show that by 2020 Vietnam will need a total of 2,680 pilots for commercial flights, 1,320 more than now. Vietnam Airlines, the country’s flag carrier, needs to hire 193 more pilots to increase the number on its payroll to 1,293 pilots to meet demand in 2019, according to the carrier’s recent assessment report.

    The assessment forecast the demand to keep rising increasing to 1,340 by 2020 and 1,570 by 2025. This is a challenging number given the increasing shortage of pilots globally, according to industry insiders.

    According to a recent report from Boeing, the global aviation industry will need 790,000 new pilots by 2037, or double the current number, driven by an anticipated doubling of the commercial airplane fleet, record travel demand and tightening labor supply.

    Pilot training has always been extremely expensive, with stringent health and technical knowledge requirements, meaning that the number of pilots qualifying is always limited, according to industry insiders.

    A former Vietnam Airlines pilot revealed that because of the shortage, soon after he gave notice of termination he received many offers from airlines both domestic and foreign.

    He said many other pilots at Vietnam Airlines also constantly offered 15-25 percent higher salaries by head hunters.

    As a result the carrier has been focusing on hiring trainees. Duong Tri Thanh, its general director, said given the global shortage of pilots and carry out its expansion plans in time, Vietnam Airlines has been training internally and recruiting foreign pilots despite high costs.

    Similarly, Jetstar Pacific or Vietjet Air are facing difficulties filling their vacancies with pilots when trying to rapidly expand in South Korea, Japan, and other countries in Southeast Asia. Currently, the number of pilots at these firms is largely foreign due to limited domestic supply. Typically, at Jetstar Pacific, foreign pilots account for 80 percent of their fleet.

    However, foreign pilots can be hard to come by since many other companies in Asia can offer them better remuneration and working conditions.

    An aviation expert said airlines need to combat the pilot shortage by investing in training facilities and recruitment programs and subsidizing training for pilot trainees.

    Vietnam’s aviation industry has been growing rapidly in recent years. There were 12.5 million air passengers last year, up 14.4 percent from 2017.

    The number of flights in the country grew by 16 percent on average between 2010 and 2017, according to official data.

    Vienam’s five airlines are Vietnam Airlines, its low-cost carrier Jetstar Pacific, budget airline Vietjet Aviation, Bamboo Airways and Vietnam Air Services Co.

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  • Bamboo Airways postpones maiden flight again

    Bamboo Airways postpones maiden flight again

    Vietnam’s newest airline Bamboo Airways will not operate its maiden flight Thursday as scheduled, the second time it has been delayed. Its CEO Dang Tat Thanh said Bamboo Airways could not take off since it is going through “the most difficult examination ever.” “Bamboo Airways is currently going through the final stage of a tight examination by authorities before taking off,” he said, adding that the first flight would now be in mid-January. The airline aimed to launch the first flight on December 29, after failing to launch services in October as previously planned.

    The carrier, owned by conglomerate FLC, received a license last November but is still awaiting an aircraft operator certificate (AOC).

    It was established in May last year with a charter capital of VND700 billion ($30 million), which it increased two months later to VND1.3 trillion ($55.68 million).

    It has signed deals to buy 24 Airbus A320neo and 20 Boeing B787-9 Dreamliner aircraft worth a total of $8.6 billion. Earlier this month it took delivery of the first aircraft, an Airbus A319 leased from an Irish company.

    The airline plans to operate on 100 routes, connecting major cities and travel destinations in Vietnam with the rest of the world.

    FLC chairman Trinh Van Quyet said earlier that the first routes could be between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and from the two cities to Quy Nhon.

    Vietnam has four other carriers still in operation: Vietnam Airlines, Vietjet Air, Jetstar Pacific, and VASCO.

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