Expert analyses development opportunities for VN's aviation sector

Vietnam Airlines and Bamboo Airways plan to devise roadmaps for opening direct routes to the US (Photo: VietnamPlus)

Hanoi (VNA) - Foreign aviation experts and leaders of domestic airlines will gather at a seminar on December 11 in Hanoi to discuss measures to develop Vietnam's aviation market in a sustainable manner. 

The seminar on opportunities and challenges of Vietnam’s aviation industry will be hosted by the Ministry of Transport, focusing on obstacles and barriers facing the sector as well as opportunities for Vietnam to promote cooperation and sustainable development in the field.

Notably, Prof. Nawal Taneja - the author of 11 famous books on aviation, will attend the event as a main speaker.

According to Taneja, this is a very significant aviation event after Vietnam has been granted the Category 1 aviation safety rating (CAT1) by the US Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to operate flights to the American nation.

Besides, the US Department of Transportation agreed to allow Vietnamese airlines to operate flights from Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to five cities in the country, including Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Seattle.  Besides Vietnam Airlines, Bamboo Airways and low-cost airlines like Vietjet are also interested in this route.

Taneja stressed that there is huge potential for the sector’s greater development because of the increasing demand of travel by air to and from the US where more than one million Vietnamese people are living, and the need for tourism from many countries worldwide.

He affirmed that there are many opportunities for airlines.

Opening a route to the US by Vietnam Airlines will depend on many factors such as non-stop flight or one-stop flight; codeshare agreement with an American airline; speed of expanding service capacity at Vietnam’s airports.

Other factors mentioned by the expert are how effectively Vietnam Airlines can develop its brand in the US market as well as what strategies it will have to break even in the fastest time.

Unlike many aviation experts who are only proficient in theory, Teneja has a rich experience of management practice because he had served as president of an airline that provides jet services. He had also been president of a global air transport consultancy organization.

Prof. Taneja often gives consultations related to trends in customer segmentation, customer expectations, new technologies and tools, new forms of transportation, social network, and distribution channels, to major airlines around the world and organizations and businesses operating in the aviation industry.

For governments, he is seen as a widely influential expert. Taneja has served as an advisor to civil aviation, financial, economic and tourism agencies in many developed countries on issues concerning the role of governments in creating conditions for aviation development, in order to promote tourism and economic growth.

In December 2010, Airlines Business magazine listed him among the 26 most influential leaders in the aviation industry over the past 25 years.

From 2008 – 2019, Vietnam’s aviation industry saw impressive growth, with the number of passengers and volume of cargo experiencing 5.2-fold and 3.2-fold increases, respectively. The number of domestic and international flights grew by 2.4 times and 2.44 times, respectively.

With the CAT 1 status, Vietnamese carriers will be able to establish direct services to the US and carry the code of US carriers upon completion of the necessary remaining steps, including Vietnamese airports earning approval to comply with ICAO security standards and recommended practices from the US Transportation Security Administration, and Vietnamese airlines earning economic authority from the US Department of Transportation.

Statistics by the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam show that the number of passengers flying between Vietnam and the US grew 8 percent annually in average from 2010 – 2017 with more than 700,000 passengers in 2017.

Last year, about 107,000 Vietnamese people travelled to the US./.