HO CHI MINH CITY, 25 February 2026: Vietnam Airlines will resume flights between Ho Chi Minh City and Phuket on 2 April with four weekly flights served by an A321 configured with 184 seats.
The airline confirmed that scheduled flights would begin every Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, as outlined in a timetable update distributed to travel agencies in Vietnam late January.
Past efforts to establish routes from Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to the popular holiday island in southern Thailand performed poorly due to what ticketing agents described as a slow pickup in traffic on the return sectors from Phuket to the two Vietnamese cities. The airline suspended flights during the post-COVID years.
Effective 2 April, the airline has confirmed a schedule through to the end of May, initially to test market response to its one-hour, 50-minute flights between Ho Chi Minh City and Phuket. Round-trip fares start at USD199 according to a search of the Vietnam Airlines booking website.
Flight schedule
VN621 departs Ho Chi Minh City (SGN) at 1600 and arrives in Phuket (HKT) at 1750.
VN620 departs Phuket (HKT) at 1845 and arrives in Ho Chi Minh City (SGN) at 2045.
Vietnam Airlines will go head-to-head with rival Vietjet, which also flies the Ho Chi Minh City-Phuket route, offering travellers daily services on an A321 with 212 seats. The round-trip fare on the route averages USD180 before competition increases with the arrival of Vietnam Airlines’ four weekly flights effective 2 April. This is a significant move as it breaks the current monopoly on the route, which has been served exclusively by VietJet Air for several years.
While Vietnam Airlines’ service is scheduled to begin on 2 April, availability on the airline’s booking website is not always reflected when searching for flights. Quite often, Phuket appears as a destination on the airline’s booking engine, but seats are not available for the direct flight option on one of the sectors. Or they only appear for dates much later at the end of the second quarter.
(Source: Vietnam Airlines plus additional reporting)
