BANGKOK, 8 April 2019: Bamboo Airways a start-up airline in Vietnam sprung a surprise at the weekend saying it plans to fly to Prague in the Czech Republic
Radio Prague claimed a Vietnamese representative on the Czech Government Council for National Minorities confirmed that discussions were underway.
The radio station’s website said: “Initial flights would probably connect Prague with Ho Chi Minh City rather than the capital, Hanoi.”
A large ethnic Vietnamese minority group living in the republic was cited as a rationale for flying to Prague but to survive the airline would have to tap tourist demand to sustain long-haul flights.
No details were given on frequency other than to say it would be served by a Boeing Dreamliner.
The radio station reported that Prague Airport director Václav Řehoř held a meet with Bamboo Airways representatives in March.
Bamboo Airways launched last January in a market crowded with airlines that are cutting fares to capture mainly domestic and regional travel.
Vietnam Airlines is the only Vietnamese carrier serving Europe.
None of the aircraft in the Bamboo Airways’ fleet could serve routes to Europe. It flies A321s on domestic routes and signed a contract back in February to buy 10 Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners.
Owned by property and leisure company, FLC Group, the airline placed an order for 20 Boeing 787 widebody jets worth USD5.6 billion at list prices in 2018 and revised the order to 10 aircraft during the visit of President Trump in February.
It is counting on the Dreamliners to launch international services but aviation experts assumed the airline would concentrate on flights to Korea and Japan that are recording double-digit increases in visits to Vietnam.
China would also be a major market that could be served by A320s and is already supplying close to 5 million visits to Vietnam of 15.5 million recorded in 2018.
But Prague is on the radar probably because the airline wants to find a non-competitive route with no services to Vietnam but with enough potential to sustain two-way traffic for two to three flights weekly.
The Czech Republic does not appear in tourism performance charts as a significant supplier of visits to Vietnam, but that could change.
The entire European travel market including Russia and former CIS nations delivered 2 million visits in 2018 up 8%. That compares with 12 million visits generated by countries in Asia.
According to Prague Radio, “Vietnam agreed in June 2017 during an official visit to Hanoi by Czech President Miloš Zeman, to open a direct air route to the Czech Republic and offer visa waivers to its citizens for up to 15 days.”
The airline could also count on the Czech Republic’s Vietnamese community, which exceeds 100,000, third biggest group of foreigners in the country after Ukrainians and Slovaks. It is the third largest community of Vietnamese in Europe, after France and Germany.
(Source: Prague Radio with additional reporting).
