HANOI, 15 July 2021: Vietnam remains closed to international tourists, but Vietnam Airlines is planning to resume limited commercial flights to some cities certain Asia and Europe.
Frequencies will be down to just a few per month instead of the daily flights the airline mustered in 2019 before Covid-19 shutdown global tourism.
Despite the ceiling on daily arrivals allowed into Australia, Vietnam Airlines plans to operate services from HCMC to Sydney every Thursday and Sunday beginning 15 July and scheduled for the next two months. Weekly flights from Ho Chi Minh City to Melbourne are scheduled from Tuesday 20 July.
The airline will also resume flights from Hanoi to Frankfurt on 25 July with two more flights on 28 July and 21 August. Two flights are scheduled from Hanoi to London on 13 August and again on 2 September.
Flights from Hanoi to Tokyo are scheduled to depart every Wednesday and Saturday starting 17 July 17. The airline also announced it would resume flights from HCMC to Bangkok every Wednesday.
All the flights are semi-commercial, with the return flights limited to Vietnamese citizens seeking repatriation of foreign experts invited to visit the country on official business. The outbound flights to cities in Asia and Europe will cater to foreigners who have been stranded in the country and need to return home and for Vietnamese students and workers.
No tourists are allowed to visit Vietnam, and that will remain the case until authorities test limited entry to destinations that can be closely monitored, such as Phu Quoc Island.
A 21-day quarantine up from 14 days previously underscores the seriousness of the latest wave of infections and the government’s tough response. The only hope that tourism on a limited scale could be considered during the fourth quarter of the year rest with a proposed vaccine passport scheme. It would allow vaccinated travellers to visit Phu Quoc, where quarantine could be shortened to just seven days but strict restrictions and testing requirements would remain in place.
(Source: Vietnam News Agency)
