It is June.
It is hot.
The schools are closed and it is a time to escape the heat.
It is a time to hunt for low-priced tickets.
However, the low-priced tickets are going to prove a touch elusive this year, with all carriers operating in Vietnam increasing their ticket prices and service fees.
Starting June 1, Vietjet Air has upped its system management fee for domestic flights from VND140,000 ($6.18) to VND210,000 per ticket. For international flights the new fees will range from VND210,000 to VND370,000, an increase of VND100,000 to VND130,000, according to a Thanh Nien report.
The carrier said it has increased prices according to current market conditions.
In April, national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines announced that ticket prices for children aged 2 – 12 will equal 90 percent of that for adults, compared to the previous 75 percent. For infants under two, the price remains at 10 percent of adult fare.
The Thanh Nien report said the average price for an economy class ticket of Vietnam Airlines from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi on June 12 is VND2.1 million ($92.06). But during “peak hours,” in the morning and around noon, the price rockets to VND3.6 million ($157.81), equaling rates typically seen during the Tet holidays. The cheaper tickets are only available for inconvenient times like midnight or early morning.
For Jetstar Pacific, the average ticket price for the route ranged from VND1.3 to 2.8 million, the report said.
A Jetstar representative said customers can only get cheap tickets now if they book 4-5 months in advance. Increased travel demand during the summer vacation means it will be difficult to get cheap tickets this month, he added.
According to travel planning platform Rome2Rio, all three Vietnamese airlines do not appear in the list of top 50 cheapest airlines in the world. The average price per kilometer of Vietjet Air in the country is $0.14, while that of Jetstar Pacific is $0.15. National carrier Vietnam Airlines has a much higher rate at $0.30.
Staying at the top of the list were Australia’s Tigerair Australia, Malaysia’s AirAsia X and Indonesia’s Indonesia AirAsia at $0.06, $0.07 and $0.08 per kilometer, respectively.
In the first quarter of 2018, a total of 74,165 flights belonging to the three Vietnamese took off, an increase for 10.3 percent over the same period last year, according to the Civil Aviation Authority.