National flag carrier Vietnam Airlines will resume five routes between Vietnam and China in March and April 2023.
This means the airline will restore nine of its 10 routes to China available before the Covid-19 pandemic.
This March, the carrier will resume flights between Hanoi and Beijing with three flights per week. It will also increase the frequency of flights connecting Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City with Guangzhou and Shanghai. Each of these routes will be increased from 1-2 flights per week to four flights per week.
The carrier will in April reopen four routes including Danang with Guangzhou, Shanghai and Chengdu, and Hanoi with Chengdu, with a frequency of two flights per week on each route.
In September 2023, Vietnam Airlines plans to operate wide-body Airbus A350 and Boeing 787 aircraft on routes between Hanoi and Beijing, and between Hanoi, HCMC and Shanghai.
A Vietnam Airlines representative said that such reopening and frequency increases aimed to meet travel and tourism demand between the two countries, expected to recover from March 2023.
In pre-Covid 2019, Vietnam Airlines carried 8.1 million passengers between China and Vietnam, accounting for 19% of its total number of passengers and among its top three markets.
Vietnam Airlines had the highest rate of delays in 2022 at 12.5% of flights. It operated 115,987 flights last year with 14,486 delays, the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam said Monday.