Government agrees to freeze airline licensing until 2015

      The Government has agreed in principle to the proposal by the Ministry of Transport to not license new domestic airlines until 2015.
Deputy Head of the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam (CAAV) Lai Xuan Thanh told the press that Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai agreed to the proposal by the Ministry of Transport. The proposal was made after considering aviation infrastructure, labour and the current difficulties of the aviation industry.
There are four operational airlines in Vietnam: Vietnam Airlines Corporation, Vietnam Air Services Company, Jetstar Pacific and Indochina Airlines.
Thanh said that Vietnam is now seriously lacking qualified labour for the aviation industry. 30 percent of Vietnam Airlines’ pilots are foreign, while the ratio is 99 percent for Jetstar Pacific and 100 percent for Indochina Airlines.
Regarding infrastructure conditions, it is projected that Tan Son Nhat Airport in HCM City and Noi Bai Airport in Hanoi will not be able to provide enough parking places for the expected 149 aircrafts in the Vietnamese fleet by 2015.
Tan Son Nhat has only 41 aircraft parking spots at present, and is expected to have only 50 by 2015. Noi Bai, meanwhile, has a mere 21, and will have just 42 after an expansion project is completed in 2012.
“Infrastructure capacity, especially the number of aircraft parking places of the two airports is an important consideration in the plan to develop the fleet of Vietnamese air carriers,” Thanh said.
In 2008, the aviation industry served 23.4 million passengers, while nearly 437,000 tonnes of goods went through airports, representing growth rates of 15.7 and 11.6 percent, respectively, in comparison with 2007. However, the number of passengers proved to be much lower than the 60 million passengers in Thailand, 47 million in Malaysia and 40 million in Singapore.
Vietnam hopes to become the fourth-biggest aviation market in Southeast Asia with 29 million passengers by 2010 and 47 million passengers by 2015 (18 million international and 29 million domestic passengers) and 60-70 million passengers by 2020.
Under the development plans of air carriers, Vietnam’s fleet will have 149 aircrafts by 2015 and will be capable of providing 33 million seats per annum. It is expected that the aviation market will serve 35 million passengers by 2015, including 19.5 million foreign passengers.