Vietnam Conference Mulls Ways To Make More People Fly

A shortage of airplanes and domestic services and inflexibility in fares have restricted the number of Vietnamese people traveling by air, a conference on free trade in civil aviation heard Friday.

Just 500,000 out of the country’s 85 million had ever boarded an airplane, Luong Hoai Nam, CEO of Pacific Airlines, said.

Only one out of every 20 people in the country flew on domestic routes, he added. The figure was one out in 10 in Indonesia and one in five in Thailand and Malaysia. In Australia every person flew twice a year.

Nam’s no-frills carrier is one of Vietnam’s two carriers, the other being the national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines. Vietnam Air Service Co. (VASCO), which flies on some domestic routes, is a Vietnam Airlines offshoot.

The country’s civil aviation law allows “every economic sector” to set up airlines, provided they are approved by the government and licensed by the transport ministry.

However, legal experts at the conference pointed out that in the absence of support documents to guide its implementation, the law was not enforceable.

Seven government decrees and more than half of 15 decisions planned by ministries relating to its implementation were still “under preparation,” Phan Trung Ly, vice director of the National Assembly’s Commission for Legal Affairs, said.

Ho Quoc Cuong, a senior official in the Vietnam Civil Aviation Administration, said the lack of airplanes was a reason for the airlines’ failure to meet domestic demand.

Pacific Airlines has only four aircraft, and Vietnam Airlines 45.

Nam called on the government to scrap the ceiling fares that prohibit fares from exceeding a certain limit.

If it was eliminated, airlines could offer some tickets at cheap prices, enabling more people to fly, he said.

Tran Quoc Thuan, vice director of the National Assembly Office, said since the ceiling was prescribed in the aviation law, that had to be amended first.