Vietnam airlines found selling tickets for not-yet-approved extra flights

The 2017 Lunar New Year, or Tet in Vietnamese, falls late January, but people in big cities normally start flying back to their hometowns weeks before the New Year’s Eve to observe the country’s traditional holidays with their beloved.

Airfares usually shoot through the roof during this special occasion but easily sell out, and people therefore tend to book tickets even months before departure.

However, early ticket buyers are sitting on hot bricks, when the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) recently announced that the planned additional flights of local carriers have yet to be approved - and may never be.

Adding flights before approval

Three Vietnamese airlines, flag carrier Vietnam Airlines and low-cost Vietjet and Jetstar Pacific, all announced they will add thousands of flights during Tet, and already started to accept booking over the last two months.

Vietjet plans to add 1,500 flights during Tet, having started sales for 1.5 million tickets with departures between January 15 and February 15, 2017. The no-frills carrier said there is huge demand for flights from Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to northern and central destinations, adding Tet tickets are selling out.

Jetstar Pacific has also announced an addition of 1 million seats for the busy travel time, up 25% from last Tet.

In the meantime, Vietnam Airlines said it will add nearly 900 flights, or 185,000 seats, for travels between January 15 and February 13, totaling the number of seats available during Tet to 1.6 million.

Despite these widely publicized plans, it turns out that the airlines have sold tickets for additional flights even before they are allowed to offer the extra services.

“These announced additional flights are only based on the plans of each carrier, not the final official figures,” CAAV head Lai Xuan Thanh told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

Thanh said it is not simple to add new flights, as “a carrier has to have enough resources.”

According to the official, 67% of the extra flights have departure time between 11:00 pm to 7:00 am the following day.

“Aviation employees are not allowed to work overtime, given the importance of their job,” he said, implying that there will be not enough airport personnel to work after midnight.

Thanh said the extra flights may even paralyze operations of the Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Son Nhat International Airport.

“In 2016 the flight frequency at Tan Son Nhat is already 28 percent higher than normal rate,” Thanh said. “If the frequency is raised further, the whole airport will be completely stuck.”

Thanh underlined that even during the busy Tet occasion, the frequency at Tan Son Nhat must be maintained at 40 landing/takeoff per hour.

“The CAAV will also thoroughly check the operation capacity and service ability of each carrier and will not approve their extra-flight plans if they fail to ensure these requirements,” Thanh said.

“If you offer additional flights and then fail to serve passengers, they will get a lot angrier than usual.”

Dang Tuan Tu, director of Tan Son Nhat, said the airport also needs the final approval from the CAAV for the additional flights, rather than just the announcement from airlines.

Tu made no secret that his airport will continue to be overloaded during Tet.

The airport is expected to handle some 32 million passengers by the end of this year, far surpassing the designed capacity of only 25 million passengers a year, according to the director.

Airlines to take responsibility

Passengers who already bought Tet tickets said they do not care about the business between airlines and the aviation watchdog, as “the carrier should by all means offer service as stated in the tickets it sold to passengers.”

“It is not about money, as we may get a refund for the booked tickets,” said Trang, a Ho Chi Minh City-based worker who plans to fly home in the north-central province of Ha Tinh. “What matters more is we are unable to return home for Tet.”

Commenting on the risk passengers now face with the additional flights, Thanh said the airlines have to take full responsible for their passengers.

“Just because airlines have already sold tickets for additional flights does not mean that CAAV must approve these services,” Thanh said.

The CAAV added that it is carriers who wanted to be allowed to sell tickets before getting approval for additional flights in the first place.

Under the old regulation, airlines were only allowed to start selling tickets after they obtained approval for the extra services.

“But airlines later petitioned that they be allowed to sell tickets in advance, and they will be fully responsible for any problems that may arise, to which the government has agreed,” Thanh said.