Vietnam to resume international commercial flights mid-September

International flights to Japan and South Korea will resume with the frequency of four trips per week for each route, General Director of the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam Dinh Viet Thang told Vietnam News Agency on Monday.

The Southeast Asian country has completed consultation about the flight resumption with the Japanese and Korean aviation authourities, he said.

On September 1^st, the Ministry of Transport organised a meeting with representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of National Defense, Ministry of Health, and Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs to discuss the plan in detail.

Vietnam suspended all international commercial flights since April 1 in a bid to prevent importation of Covid-19. It is estimated that Vietnamese airlines will suffer a loss of $4 billion this year.

Five domestic airlines including Vietnam Airlines, Vietjet, Bamboo Airways, Pacific Airways, and VASCO operated 16,400 flights between July 19 and August 18, down 45% from the same period last year, reported CAAV.

In a bid to support the domestic carriers, the Vietnam Aviation Business Association has called on the Government to offer the airlines credit worth over $1 billion at preferential interest rates for three- to four-year terms.

In recent meeting on COVID-19 response, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc reaffirmed the Government’s resolve to pursue the dual goal of containing Covid-19 and restarting the economy heavily impacted by the pandemic.

Official data released by the General Statistics Office on weekend showed that inbound tourism shrank 66.6% while trade with the rest of the world contracted 0.3% on year in January-August.

► Vietnam’s eight-month trade surplus widens to nearly $12bln

► Foreign tourists to Vietnam drop 66.6 percent in eight-month period on pandemic

Source: Vietnam News Agency