Bamboo Airways eyes direct route to Australia

By Dat Nguyen September 7, 2020 | 12:00 am PT

A Bamboo Airways aircraft seen on a runway of the Melbourne Airport in Melbourne, Australia, September 6, 2020. Photo courtesy of Bamboo Airways.

Bamboo Airways plans to open a direct regular route between Hanoi and Melbourne early next year using the wide-body aircraft Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner.

The airline made this announcement after conducting its first flight to Australia last Sunday to carry nearly 300 Vietnamese workers and students home.

Nguyen Ngoc Trong, deputy CEO of Bamboo Airways, said in a statement that Australia was one of the most important aviation markets for Vietnam.

The airline is preparing to operate international flights once the Covid-19 situation has been contained globally. It is eyeing in particular flights connecting Vietnam with destinations in Oceania, Southeast Asia and Asia.

For the remaining months of this year, Bamboo Airways will continue to operate charter flights to international destinations like South Korea, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, mainland China, Prague and the U.S., Trong said.

The airline was launched in January last year and was operating 40 domestic and international routes before the pandemic struck Vietnam this January.

It conducted 2,040 flights last month, up 21 percent year-on-year, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV).