Nearly 2,000 night flights to be operated during Lunar New Year holiday

Check-in desk at an airport. — Photo thanhnien.vn

HÀ NỘI — More than 1,800 night flights, equivalent to 8 per cent of the total number of domestic flights, will be operated from January 21 to February 25 to meet the increasing travel demand during the Tết (Lunar New Year) holiday, the most important travel season of the year.

The Civil Aviation Authority of Việt Nam (CAAV) issued a document allowing night flights (between 9pm and 5:59am) during the Tết holiday, and asked carriers to take actions to minimise flight delays and cancellations, and to intensify control to ensure aviation safety.

Local airports, especially Đồng Hới, Phù Cát, Chu Lai, Tuy Hoà, Thọ Xuân, Vinh and Pleiku, were urged to develop specific plans and measures to ensure the capacity to provide services during the holiday and ensure sufficient resources, equipment and infrastructure facilities to serve flights following airline’s operation plans.

Domestic airlines are requested to proactively and timely provide accurate information about their demand for operating night flights to aviation service providers, to ensure the quality of air services.

Bamboo Airways said it has just added one more Airbus A320 aircraft to its fleet. As planned, another will be added to the firm’s fleet from the middle of January.

It plans to increase its capacity by over 20 per cent during peak times, focusing on raising the frequency of flights on major routes such as Hà Nội-HCM City, between Hà Nội/HCM City and Đà Nẵng, and those with high demand such as HCM City-Vinh/Thanh Hoá/Hải Phòng. Additionally, the airline will also increase night flights on routes connecting HCM City with Hà Nội, Vinh and Đà Nẵng.

Similarly, the budget airline Vietjet has also added four more aircraft to its fleet, lifting the total aircraft of the firm to 103.

The CAAV has estimated that the domestic air carriers will operate about 33,800 flights during the Tết holiday, or between January 24 and February 2, up 14 per cent year-on-year and 21 per cent as compared with normal days.

There will be some 24,200 domestic flights, representing an increase of 2 per cent from the same period last year; and 9,600 international flights, up 60 per cent year-on-year.

The busiest routes include Hà Nội-HCM City, HCM City-Đà Nẵng/Vinh/Đồng Hới/Quy Nhơn/Chu Lai/Thanh Hoá/Huế/Tuy Hoà, and Cần Thơ-Vinh, and vice versa.

The airlines expect to fly 7.2 million passengers during Tết, of them more than 5 million are domestic, up 4 per cent year-on-year.

The prices of night flights are not drastically lower compared to day flights, according to airlines, as they have to account for the near-empty flights back even on high-demand routes, and to really have more affordable pricing, ACV is the one who needs to cut airports’ fees.

However, ACV said that operating at night/early hours is even more costly with higher compensation for workers needed.

Most economy class tickets for popular routes like HCM City-Hà Nội have been sold out from one to two months ago. — VNS