Coming Soon: Nonstop Vietnam!

Has Covid-19 got your feet a little itchy for some international travel?

It looks like a Vietnamese airline has aspirations of offering service to the US as soon as next year. Bamboo Airways of Vietnam has filed official paperwork with the US Department of Transportation requesting authorization for flights to US cities. 

If you’ve never heard of Bamboo Airways, you’re not the only one. 

The airline is only a few years old, being founded in 2017, and launching its first flights last year in January of 2019. Even so, pre-Covid the airline was offering a strong domestic network within Vietnam, as well as an impressive international South Asia network for a 2-year-old airline, including places like Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and even as far west as Kuwait.

So, why is this a big deal? Well, this would be the first nonstop flight between the two countries, ever. 

While relations between the two countries were normalized after about 20 years by the US Clinton administration in the 1990s, this would be the first effort in capitalizing on tourism between the two countries in over two decades.

While their current filings with the DOT do not list any cities they plan to serve, Bamboo owns and operates the Boeing 787 Dreamliner which has a long-range between city pairs, capable of flights in excess of 15 hours. While this means they could operate routes as long as Vietnam to New York – shorter than United Airlines Singapore to San Francisco, it’s more likely the airline will operate to the US West Coast cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The Bamboo Airways fleet operates around 20 Airbus A320 narrowbody family aircraft throughout their network, and operates a handful of Boeing B787 aircraft. Their Boeing 787 which is planned for routes to the US seat a modest 294 passengers (compared to Norwegian’s 344 in the same size aircraft), including 26 international business class “lay-flat” seats, 21 premium economy seats, and 247 economy seats.