Earlier this month
Vietnam Airlines announced that it will provide 11,000 more tickets for
Tet flights in the first stage. However, booking agents have affirmed
that no air route has seen additional flights.
Nhung, the owner of a booking agent in Tan Binh District in HCM City,
said that she has been “hunting” for air tickets since the beginning of
the month, but unsuccessfully.
The flights on HCM City – Hanoi route which will take off after January
24, 2011 (or December 21 of the Lunar Year) all have run out of economy
tickets, and only business class tickets are left. to book business
class tickets, one has to pay 3,350,000 dong . As for the Hanoi – HCM
City route, to book the flights after February 7, 2011 ( the fifth day
of the new Lunar Year), one will also have to become businessmen.
Nhung said that after Vietnam Airlines announced that it will launch
more flights on Tet holiday, people call the booking agent regularly . A
lot of passengers accept to pay 400,000-500,000 dong more . However,
Nhung said the only thing she can do now is to book standby tickets. But
now even standby tickets are not accepted on some air routes.
“I have heard that by the end of this year, Vietnam Airlines will
announce another plan to launch more air tickets for Tet flights in the
second stage. However, I still cannot understand why I cannot purchase
any tickets in the first stage,” Nhung complained.
Nhung said that at the same time in 2009, economy class tickets also ran
out. However, in the days just before Tet (from December 27 Lunar
Year), tickets unexpectedly appeared on the market in big quantity.
Nhung thinks that the scenario would repeat this year, and she has
advised passengers to wait . However, as this is not certain, no
passenger wants to wait, and they want immediate bookings.
As for HCM City - Da Nang route, passengers who want to fly from January
27, 2011 to February 2, 2011 (24-30 December of Lunar Year) now also
only have business class tickets to buy. Of course, business tickets are
much more expensive than economy tickets. In order to have a business
ticket, one will have to pay 2,100,000 dong, while economy ticket.only
costs 600,000 dong
Similarly, on the reverse route, if passengers want to fly on February
6-13 with Vietnam Airlines, they also have to buy business class
tickets. Vietnam Airlines said it would offer more seats, about 3200
seats per day per route, an increase of 28 percent over the previous Tet
and an increase of 44 percent in comparison with normal days. On peak
days, the number of seats to be provided may reach 4000 seats per day,
or double that of normal days.
However, to date, the demand has still been far exceeding the supply.
Meanwhile, talking with Sai gon Tiep Thi on November 25, a
representative from Vietnam Airlines said that the air tickets on
additional flights have been selling since the beginning of the month.
However, even the additional tickets cannot meet the demand, because of
the overly high number of passengers who have booked standby tickets.
However, many booking agents said that they do not know that tickets
have been sold. Some agents even think the sale of additional tickets
will only begin at the end of the month.
The budget airline Jetstar Pacific has also reportedly sold all the
tickets for the flights from December 22 of Lunar Year to Tet. As for
Air Mekong, all the economy class tickets for HCM City – Hanoi flights
on the days just before Tet have also been sold. However, the airline
still has a lot of Full Deluxe class tickets to offer which are priced
at 2,845,000 dong.
Truong Thanh Vu, Commercial and Service Director of Air Mekong, said
that the airline will increase the transport capacity by 20 percent on
Tet, raising the total number of seats to 3200 per day.