The first Vietnamese citizens in Ukraine were brought home from Romania (Photo: VietnamPlus)
Hanoi (VNA) – The first group of 287 Vietnamese citizens in Ukraine has arrived in Hanoi, aboard a Vietnam Airlines flight, arriving home thankful, with a special feeling of returning safe and sound.
Arranged by the Vietnamese Government with flight costs taken care of, the 11-hour flight departed Henri Coandă International Airport in Romania’s capital of Bucharest on March 7 (local time) and landed in Hanoi’s Noi Bai International Airport on March 8.
There were 71 children under 12 years old on board, including 14 under two years old.
During the 11-hour flight, Vietnam Airlines crewmembers successfully completed their mission with great sense of responsibility for their compatriots.
Crewmembers with special mission
Pham Thai Hoa, Vietnam Airlines chief flight attendant held that this was a very special flight, which was conducted in the context of intense war, so he and his crew felt a great responsibility.
Learning about the repatriation flight, Hoa and many of his colleagues volunteered to take part in this mission. Only Vietnam Airlines pilots and flight attendants who have a large number of flying hours and rich experience in handling emerging situations were chosen for the mission.
Hoa, who served in flights to bring Vietnamese citizens home from war zones and pandemic-hit areas such as Libya, Taiwan (China), Japan, and the UK, said that the flight crew not only have to ensure good security and safety for the passengers, but also should make sure that all COVID-19 prevention and control measures are strictly implement.
“The crew is very proud to have completed the task that the State had assigned to Vietnam Airlines. We are like soldiers who are always on stand-by, ready to take on the task and we will always complete our mission,” Hoa stressed
The most moving moment for Hoa was when he witnessed the happiness and joy of the passengers when Vietnam Airlines finally touched down in Hanoi. Among the passengers, there were many children, and a woman who was in her 30th week of pregnancy.
“Getting on the plane meant returning home. Wherever Vietnamese citizens are, they are cared for by the homeland. All people are very happy to return to the motherland,” Hoa said.
Special flights with special passengers
Nguyen Nam Thanh, a flight attendant that has worked for Vietnam Airlines for six years, said that he and all the crewmembers tried to comfort the passengers after everything that they had been through, and show the great attention from the Government and the Fatherland to their safety amid the tense war.
Thanh said there was a family that lived near the war zone on the flight, who spent 30 hours on roads through the forests and mountains to reach the Vietnamese Embassy in Romania.
“Before boarding the flight, the luggage of this four-member family included only clothes in two backpacks. The last vehicle carrying the family across the border between Ukraine-Moldova-Romania was left in a foreign land. Their journey to get back home was really hard," Thanh said with red eyes while talking about the journey that Vietnamese citizens evacuated from Ukraine.
Ho Minh Tam, the captain of the first flight to bring Vietnamese people home from Romania, said that it took Vietnam Airlines three days to prepare for the flight.
Due to the conflict, for the first time, Tam had piloted a flight through China, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Georgia and Bulgaria to Romania.
“This was a special flight. We saw the responsibility of a national-flag carrier on the happy faces of the nearly 300 passengers who returned home safe and sound,” stated Tam.
Watching the last passengers leaving the aircraft, the crew hugged each other to share the happiness for successfully repatriating them. The passengers and crewmembers truly believe that the Party and State, and the nation would leave no one behind./.
