36 reviews
Don’t worry: these two reports on VietJetAir and Vietnam Airlines aren’t going to be very long. Which also means that they probably won’t draw a lot of eyeballs, let alone comments!
Travelling bonus at the end: Bui Vien Walking Street with Indian restaurants; a night by the Saigon River.
VietJetAir. VietjetAir. Vietjet Air. Or just VietJet. There are a number of spellings for this low-cost airline — I’m going with the first (J and A capital; no space) though this website uses the second — but we can all agree on one thing: the way VJ has been targeting Indian travellers lately is insane. Most Indian fliers know little beyond the bare-bones product of IndiGo (6E): no hot meals; barely anything to buy onboard; no Wi-Fi; no streaming IFE — though a one-route trial started in May 2024 — and 6-/7-hour-long flights from India to Nairobi, Tbilisi, Almaty and Jakarta on a barely padded thin cushion… I’ve ranted about all this before. But what you do get on 6E is the all-important inflight magazine, a fair bit of snacks (if prebooked online), friendly courteous service — a memorable incident comes to mind when I was taken care of while unwell — and efficient flights across an unbeatable 350-strong fleet of A320/1neo and ATR 72 aircraft.
Which is where VJ, with its hot meals, shopping goodies, leather seats and heavily Indian-friendly service, comes into the picture. Indians with itchy feet — somewhat before COVID but certainly after it — have been flocking en masse to Vietnam, and with Bilateral Air Services Agreements (BASA) being greatly expanded between the two countries, Vietnam Airlines and especially VietJetAir have grabbed the chance with both hands. The only Indian airlines serving Vietnam are Air India with its new Delhi (DEL)–Ho Chi Minh City (SGN) route from June 2024, and IndiGo from Kolkata (CCU) in the east to both Hanoi (HAN) and HCMC, which were operational even before the pandemic. 6E, India’s largest airline, hasn’t bothered to serve Vietnam from any other city, even though on the Indonesian front it launched Mumbai–Jakarta and Bengaluru–Denpasar (its longest narrowbody route) in 2023–24. (Delhi for its part has a flight to Denpasar, not 6E but Vistara, on the 787-9 at that!)
In contrast, the two big Vietnamese carriers have far more Indian service: VN serves DEL and BOM — initially it even used the A350 — while VJ serves not only those two but also Ahmedabad (AMD) in the west and Kochi (COK) in the south. BASA restrictions have prevented it from expanding to the big South Indian metros of Bengaluru (BLR), Hyderabad (HYD) and Chennai (MAA) — VJ announced BLR and HYD flights in late 2022 but had to pull them off and refund everything — and it also tried its hand at Tiruchirappalli (TRZ), not too far from Chennai, at the same time as Kochi in late 2023, but this was dropped afterwards in 2024. VJ was even more aggressive in the past, with routes from the culture hub of Da Nang (DAD) and even the island of Phu Quoc (PQC) to India, but those were later dropped and all India service is from either Hanoi or HCMC. These have attracted hordes of Indian tourists thanks to VJ’s rock-bottom affordable fares.
Hanoi to HCMC it is — but where’s the A330-300?
Regardless, even though BLR, HYD, MAA and CCU will remain out of reach for VietJetAir in the near future — though CCU is the only city with Vietnam service on 6E — that hasn’t stopped budget-conscious Indian travellers from flying to the laidback, chillaxed capital of Hanoi in the north and the frenetic, bustling metropolis of Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon in the south. I, too, had to partake of the Vietnamese action to bring 2023 — a record-shattering year for personal travel in every way — to a close, but I’d be taking a more circuitous, roundabout routing: Singapore to Mumbai to Bengaluru (Singapore Airlines A380, Vistara A320neo in Premium Economy); Bengaluru to Hong Kong to Hanoi (Cathay Pacific A350 and A321neo); Hanoi to HCMC (VietJetAir A330-300) and back (Vietnam Airlines A350-900); and eventually, after 2024 started, an SQ A350 from Hanoi back to Changi.
Now I was fully aware that there was no guarantee of getting VN and VJ’s latest and greatest widebodies on a domestic flight — the A330-300 for VJ; the A350-900 or 787-9/10 for VN — but the flights I booked (VJ131 HAN–SGN and VN216 SGN–HAN) did have some chance of getting them, based on the seatmap as well as past operational history. I figured I might as well try my hand at getting them — flying on an all-economy A330-300 in a 3-3-3 configuration isn’t the most comfortable way to fly, to put it mildly — but if these planes didn’t turn up, that wouldn’t negatively affect my experiences on VN and VJ in any way. And, indeed, they didn’t turn up on the day: VJ131 got switched to a non-neo, sharkletted A320 — though the A321neo is more common for this flight number — but VN216 at least remained on a widebody, with the 787-10 turning up instead of the A350. Indeed, the SkyTeam member has certain designated flights between the two cities that will always be operated by widebodies, either the A350-900 or the 787-9/10, and I got what I paid for (even if not the A350) so I’m not complaining.
I had high expectations from VietJetAir, as I’m a big fan of its marketing: friendly and fun with attitude, but not the horrible, overbearing boomer-trying-to-be-cool-kid vibe I get from Scoot. I cannot state enough just how much I hate Scoot’s marketing, as it’s self-obsessed and over-cheeky, which is all the more a shame when it’s owned by none other than that epitome of luxury, Singapore Airlines. In contrast, VietJetAir has got its image exactly on point: it knows how to have fun without going overboard — doubly so with the way it’s successfully brought Indian families to fly it instead of IndiGo or TG/MH/SQ. It seems VJ’s days of parading itself around as the ‘bikini airline’ with a risqué calendar have come to an end, and I really like the direction it’s taken. On the whole I was very happy indeed to have flown VietJetAir, and it’s easily one of the best LCC products in the region — replete with a magazine and hot meals — with only AirAsia’s Wi-Fi and streaming IFE beating it, not to mention AirAsia’s option to book two hot meals per sector.
TL;DR: For those (Indians especially) used to ultra-low-cost carriers’ penny-pinching practices, VietJetAir is a breath of fresh air, with leather seats, a magazine, hot meals and plenty of shopping goodies. Among ASEAN LCCs, only AirAsia with its wider hot meals, Wi-Fi and streaming IFE manages to beat it — Scoot and perhaps Jetstar are far behind — but it no longer has a magazine! (A shoutout to Cebu Pacific, too, from the Philippines, as its fun brand and hot meals are perfect and bang on point — but India is not exactly on its radar, unlike VietJetAir.)
Thursday, 28 December, morning. In a small inn near Hanoi Airport, I woke up to the fact that my parents were flying to our hometown of Kolkata for a few days, and returning with my granny (mother’s mother) on New Year’s Eve — and they were doing so on an IndiGo A320 leased from SmartLynx, the Latvian charter airline. To mitigate the groundings of dozens of A320neos with Pratt & Whitney engines, 6E has inducted a number of leased A320s from SmartLynx with Latvian YL-, Estonian EE- and the omnipresent, red-hot-popular Maltese 9H- registrations. (It seems you can’t throw a stone at a European airport without hitting a 9H plane — particularly from Ryanair…)
Anyway, today’s plane was not a 9H but a YL, and I told my parents the same; Mom was astonished. ‘Oma tai?‘ (Oh my God, really?!)
Speaking of my own flight, it soon became clear that none of VietJetAir’s seven A330-300s (VN-A81* series) would be in Hanoi in time for my flight. One was in Melbourne, another in Brisbane, a third returning from Sydney. A fourth was coming not from Australia, but from Almaty, Kazakhstan, to the seaside resort of Nha Trang (CXR); a fifth was in Delhi; a sixth was in Vientiane, the capital of nearby Laos. Only the seventh (VN-A811) was flying from Hanoi to HCMC, but since that flight takes two hours, there was no way she would return for my flight.
I wasn’t disappointed at all — this wasn’t the disgusting Thai Airways 777-200ER, which I’ve had the misfortune of experiencing twice — and at this point I was expecting an A321(neo). Whatever it might be, however, there was no way I’d be let down today, not on an airline as fun and likeable as VietJetAir.
After a very quick breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, fruits and jam — with two young Dutch female travellers at the adjoining table — I headed out and into an orange Mitsubishi Xpander SUV, which is all the rage in both Indonesia and Vietnam, and set out for the airport.
En route, a 787-9 of the flag carrier (VN-A861) took off, and it was too good to miss. Really, VN has capitalised on exactly what its nearby SkyTeam partner, the perpetually money-bleeding Garuda Indonesia, failed to do: get a new fleet of A350s and 787s. VN is by no means a flashy airline, unlike GA during the glory days of the mid-2010s, but one has to appreciate VN for silently building a strong fleet of A350s and 787s — GA has slightly older A330s (plus three A330-900neos) and 777-300ERs instead — in addition to A321(neo)s and, soon, 737 MAXes for narrowbody travel.
At 9:15 I reached the domestic terminal, above which were suspended rows of round signs: blue for Vietnam Airlines, red for VietJetAir and green for Bamboo Airways, which has axed most of its fleet — including its three 787-9s (two went to Austrian and one to Thai) — and is now a shell of its former self.
This was that departing 787-9, and immediately on connecting to the airport Wi-Fi I was greeted by an ad for the Škoda Kodiaq. Later, after check-in and security, these were the incoming arrivals, mostly A320-family aircraft (no, no 737s) on regional routes as you’d expect.
Both Vietnam and the Philippines have embraced the A320 and especially the A321 family (with a number of neos), shunning the 737 — even though both VJ and VN have orders for the 737 MAX. That’s in stark contrast to Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, which are all A320 and 737 countries with little to no A321s. Indonesia has zero A321s; Thailand and Malaysia have two AirAsia A321neos each (HS-EAA/EAB and 9M-VAA/VAB respectively), but all that will change when AirAsia takes delivery of more A321neos from its massive order of 362.
The domestic check-in counters were packed to the brim with Indians, many of whom were families travelling in groups of seven or eight. An ad promoting VietJetAir’s Indian destinations (of which TRZ has since been cut) was proof enough of its seriousness and gung-ho-ness about this highly budget-conscious demographic. Most of them were North Indians speaking in Hindi, with no South Indians visible.
A Christmas tree had been placed before the queues, encouraging people to donate for underprivileged kids. Some children stood nearby and marvelled at the decorations. Elsewhere, other colourful advertisements — several of them for luxurious resorts — reigned supreme.
Check-in was done in a matter of minutes, and I turned right towards security. I was really astounded when I found out that there was no need to consume or dispose of water at security — that’s a first!
Some ads for VJ’s widebody business product, followed by generic ads — the noteworthy one being Tết, or the Lunar New Year, in early February.
There was a reasonably decent range of shops: not that I expect much from Vietnamese airports anyway, so my (low) expectations were exceeded. Sacombank, a private bank with a very outdated logo but a modern look, had a presence in the central foyer; VIB, with a much better-designed and cleaner identity, had blue hoardings all throughout the ceilings.
Trust me when I tell you that Vietnam has too many banks, WAY too many — as I would find out very soon…
The first thing was to look for a shop from where to buy authentic Vietnamese traditional snacks and sweets, and there was no shortage of such shops. Boarding for VJ131 was yet to start.
From Viet Nam’s Delights, I picked up a few dried fruits out of the multitude of treats and eats on display. The (heavily pregnant) cashier, when she wasn’t chatting with a colleague, calculated the bill (VND 217,000 or US$8.50) and handed the goodies to me, but I was stupefied at the sheer number of banks (40+) mentioned on the QR-code-payment system. ‘Vietnam has HOW MANY BANKS?!?!?!’
Indeed, there were a ridiculous number of banks: Vietcombank, VietinBank, BIDV — the ‘owner’ of this QR code — MB (Military Bank) and MSB (Maritime Savings Bank) being the major state-owned ones, and private ones including the aforementioned VIB and Sacombank, ACB, OCB, PVcom Bank and — you see a pattern here — VPBank, TPBank, HDBank, ABBank, LPBank, BVBank… Goodness, goodness me!!!
I might have said something, but I didn’t, and I left the place while the girl continued to yak away merrily with a hand placed firmly on her round stomach. Meanwhile, the flag carrier was advertising its new service to Perth, and VN sure has done a great job expanding its route network: I’m impressed.
It was nearly time to board, and my boarding pass was simply printed on a slip of paper, like a shopping receipt. I peeped into a small electronics shop but found nothing to tickle my fancy, and so I headed to the windows to better pass my time.
A bunch of A320/1s from both the country’s largest airlines, as well as another A321 from Bamboo Airways, had landed, not to mention a Thai Airways A320 that was soon going to return to BKK, and a 737-800 — the only passenger non-Airbus — from its Star Alliance partner Shenzhen Airlines. (The Thai Smile brand was discontinued just a few days later, on New Year’s Eve, but TG had started operating A320s like this since the middle of 2023. It will be 2025, though, before it operates the A321neo: the (mostly sharkletted) A320ceo is its only narrowbody for now.)
I was half-expecting to board one of the four A321s that’d landed an hour back, but instead my plane would be the A320 that only just landed minutes ago! Meanwhile a Korean Air private 787-8 in a swanky livery had landed, and a UPS 767-300ER was on final approach.
The views from the windows were about all I needed: vast, sweeping views of planes near and far, including a China Southern 787-9 in a special livery that was taxiing after touchdown.
I approached my gate and confirmed that the plane waiting there was not an A321neo, not even an A320neo, but an A320ceo — though a sharkletted one. This, then, would be the first numerical registration in my log: VN-A675. Not bad at all, especially as the digits added up to 18: a lucky number for me.
Meanwhile the Korean bizjet 787 announced her sleek presence, and the TG A320 (HS-TXR) took off for BKK in the distance.
The UPS 767-300ER arrived, equally as elegant as the Korean BBJ 787-8 if not more, as I proceeded to enter my A320. You can see that, unlike most airlines, VJ keeps the VietJetAir titles towards the back of the plane — something that Hungary’s Wizz Air used to do in the past — which leaves space for any special-livery stickers up front, the reverse of other airlines.
Not the promised A330-300, sure, but who’s complaining? Window seat on the right: check; hot meals: check; magazine: check, check, CHECK. Best of all: Scoot this is not!
Flight: VietJetAir VJ131/VJC131
Date: Thursday, 28 December 2023
Route: Hanoi Noibai (VVNB/HAN) to Ho Chi Minh City–Tan Son Nhat (VVTS/SGN)
Aircraft: VN-A675, Airbus A320 (sharkletted)
Age: 7 years 7 months at the time (built: 10 May 2016, delivered: 13 June 2016)
Seat: 10F (starboard side, window)
Boarding: 10:40am Indochina Time (ICT), GMT +7
Departure: 11:15am ICT
Arrival: 12:55pm ICT
Duration: 1 hour 40 minutes
Notes:
• Seventh low-cost carrier flown, after IndiGo, AirAsia (Thailand and Malaysia), Scoot, Jetstar Asia Airways — all A320 operators — and another Indian LCC, SpiceJet, which flies the 737 instead, and is absolutely worth avoiding. (The airline, that is, not the 737; I’ve finally brought myself to fly one — Malaysia Airlines (9M-MXJ) from Kuala Lumpur to Johor Bahru — after years of avoidance!)
• First flight on an aircraft registration with more than one digit — as Vietnamese aircraft have numerical instead of alphabetical registrations — with previous registrations flown containing only one digit in their prefixes: Singapore (9V), Malaysia (9M), Sri Lanka (4R), UAE (A6) and Bahrain (A9C)!
No IFE? No problem — not with all the literature!
VN-A675 was a not-too-old, not-too-new A320: new enough to have sharklets, but not nearly enough to be an A320neo. In the past, it used to have a sticker for MB Bank (Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank), but it was removed some time around its visually striking, ultramodern rebranding in late 2019.
I settled into my seat, 10F, with the all-important window view — and leather seats! — as a Bamboo Airways Embraer 190 (VN-A262), now retired, made her way to the gate after landing from the Côn Đảo islands as QH1038.
I indulged in the views of the (somewhat dirty) Bamboo E190 and had a glance at the rather utilitarian safety card.
As the mixed-gender cabin crew started their safety demo, I leafed through the menu, even though I’d pre-ordered my choice online. There was a main menu for East Asian passengers, and a dedicated separate menu for Indians (though only for Indian routes)! It shows just how ‘Vindianised’ the airline has become, unlike any other in Southeast Asia.
There was also, surprisingly but delightfully, an inflight magazine — One2fly — with extensive articles in not only Vietnamese but also English. I leafed through the onboard shopping items a bit more, since it’s not that often I fly on a low-cost carrier with a buy-on-board menu nowadays, since IndiGo offers barely anything other than cookies and nuts on many flights.
I wasn’t at all expecting a magazine on VietJetAir, let alone in English, but here it was: extensive, informative and well-written articles they were, too. This meant that of the five airlines on this trip, SQ was the only one not to have an inflight magazine!
A Korean Air A321neo (HL8506) and a Vietnam Airlines 787-9 (VN-A871) landed in quick succession. Much as I hate on the ancient Korean Air livery, new aircraft like the A220-300 (which I’d seen the previous day at the Intervals Bar at HKG) and the A321neo do make it look at least a little bit attractive. The contrast between KE’s baby blue and VN’s darker metallic blue was made very apparent, and at least three other airlines in SkyTeam alone have blue-based liveries: KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, ITA Airways and Aerolíneas Argentinas. (Garuda Indonesia, Xiamen Air and Aeroméxico also have predominantly blue tails, not to mention Delta Air Lines and perhaps Air France…)
As I feasted on the views of the sexy VN 787-9 — with different shades of blue and gold compared to the ones I’m accustomed to on SQ — we turned towards the runway for takeoff.
Another SkyTeam A321neo, this time purple and pink, made a landing: China Airlines’ B-18102 as CI791, followed by another VJ A321. Fun fact: All of the below Asian SkyTeam airlines operate the A321neo: Vietnam Airlines, China Airlines, Korean Air and Xiamen Air — but none operates the A320. The last three airlines are also all 737 operators, while VN has ordered the 737 MAX 8.
(In fact, Xiamen Air was always an all-Boeing airline with 737s, 787s and formerly 757s, until inducting the A321neo in late 2022, with the A320neo on the way as well. Today the only SkyTeam members not to operate Airbuses are Aeroméxico and Kenya Airways.)
On this bright, sunny Thursday morning in December, the skies were clear and the air crisp, though probably not as crisp as the liveries on all those A321neos — not to mention the shockingly crystal-clear 4K display on my Cathay Pacific A321neo the previous day!
We lifted off for departure, and I knew that I was going to have an enjoyable flight, if not a very memorable one. Overflying a China Airlines Cargo 747, and a bunch of red VJ and blue VN aircraft, we began our nearly two-hour journey south — almost as long as the previous day’s evening HKG–HAN route on the CX A321neo.
A middle-aged French couple beside me worked on crossword puzzles, while I flipped through the One2fly magazine. While some articles were only in Vietnamese, like the cover story on Huỳnh Tú Anh — the winner of a beauty pageant (The Face Vietnam 2023) — and a fashion feature with mostly white, black and cream clothes…
…others, like a very surprising article on Pakistan as an untamed tourist destination, were also available in English. (Who would’ve thought that this perennially quarrelling country which is best known for being a terrorist haven, with very limited service to Southeast Asia, could also double up as a mountaineer’s dream?!)
In fact, the English artices outnumbered the Vietnamese ones after a point, with another one being on the South Korean city of Busan. (Full resolution here.)
Yet more articles on Australian wild landscapes, churches during Christmas and, in the about-us section, compliments about the VJ crew and staff — something that I’d only seen in IndiGo’s and Vistara’s magazines so far! (Full resolution here.)
Another proof of VietJetAir’s Vindianisation came in the form of an ad, replete with Bollywood-esque dancers, for discounted flights to Indian cities. The advantages of VJ were mentioned in small print at the bottom, and could do with a bit more highlighting, but they were there: ‘soft leather seats’, ‘friendly & dedicated flight attendants’, ‘daily promotions & amazing gifts’, etc. This sure is an airline that knows to walk the talk, make no mistake.
Just half an hour after departure, the meal (pre-ordered online) was served, and it was quite comprehensive for a low-cost carrier. Nuts (cashews instead of peanuts), a bottle of water — with a new green Dasani branding that hasn’t reached Singapore — and inside a most delicious-looking dish, consisting of fried rice and a Thai chicken curry. The whole thing was called the ‘Combo Thai Fried Rice with Water and Cashew’ on the website, and my word, it was really, really good; I finished it off in minutes.
After this the cabin crew rolled out duty-free shopping carts, and you can barely see a teddy bear in the last row to the left. But they only accepted VND in cash, and for some reason my purse had fallen down the gap between seat and wall, and I couldn’t inconvenience my seatmates from France, so I had to let it pass.
For the record, this was how the meal looked like when I booked the ticket online, and I knew then that I’d made a great choice. Hats off, VietJetAir, for proving once again that it is indeed possible to get tasty, hot, (un)healthy food on low-cost airlines!
The rest of the flight passed peacefully, as I read a couple of books on my iPad, with little space to do anything else. At 12:45, the A320 commenced descent into Tan Son Nhat International Airport, which unlike most other metro airports in East Asia is located bang in the city centre. Noibai Airport, for the record, is located a little bit north of Hanoi — much like Colombo or Riyadh — but no major ASEAN airport is as close as this.
Someone from Kuala Lumpur — who needs to travel 50+ km south to get to KLIA — will be absolutely shocked on seeing this place, in both a good and a bad way. Then again, it’s nowhere as modern and grand as Changi or KLIA, which is why the new Long Thanh airport is coming up 40 km east…
Few cities other than Mumbai have given me the surreal feeling of landing barely a few metres above a block of houses. Ho Chi Minh City, clearly, was going to be one of them, and we touched down at 12:55pm at this very small and old but highly convenient little airport — hence my nickname of the ‘Tegel’ of Southeast Asia, named after Berlin’s former TXL airport, which was closed after the opening of the delayed-for-a-decade Brandenburg Airport in October 2020.
This airport did not give the wide-angled sweeping impression that even Hanoi managed to, let alone the grand panoramic views from HKG the previous day. A few VJ planes with special liveries were parked nearby, including VN-A630, a sharkletted A321 in ‘Vibrant Ho Chi Minh City’ colours, and VN-A653, an A321neo in ‘Mailand Hoàng Đồng’ colours. After this came a sharkletted A321 (VN-A288): one of three flying for the little-known Vietravel Airlines (code: VU), with the slogan ‘Open Your World’.
Then came a SkyTeam-liveried Vietnam Airlines A321 (VN-A327) and this triggered memories of my favourite flight of 2023, on KLM’s 777-300ER (PH-BVD) in this very livery from Singapore to Denpasar in June. This was followed by one of two EVA Air 777-300ERs on the ground at the time, and a Jetstar (Australia) 787-8, VH-VKH, which had arrived more than a day ago.
As we pulled closer to the terminal, on one side a VN 787-9 and A350-900 stood side by side, and on the other side a Malaysia Airlines A330-300 (9M-MTH) — incidentally the very aircraft on which I flew for the first time on the A330 and on a Oneworld carrier, in October 2022. This had come here 4 days ago, and would remain here for the next few days. Behind stood an A300 of Air Hong Kong, an affiliate of DHL — certainly not a well-known one!
Elsewhere, beside the SkyTeam-liveried VN A321, a Bamboo Airways A320neo (VN-A596) in the ‘Fly Green’ livery stood parked. It’s funny how almost all aircraft at this airport seem to be parked at random, whereas at Hanoi they are always next to either the terminal or the maintenance facility…
With a VN 787-9 and A321 in the near distance, we pulled up next to VN-A887, an Airbus A350-900, and I’ve gotta say, she looks razor-sharp in that blue paint scheme — especially with those pointy raked wingtips.
These were the recent arrivals at the time, with the Jetstar 787-8 and Malaysia A330-300 not having flown in over a day. There was also an A320 (TC-FHL) of Turkish charter carrier Freebird Airlines operating for VietJetAir.
As the doors opened, an unintentionally funny song — VJ’s brand song, I presume — played on the overhead PA system. Word has it that this song, entitled ‘Hello Vietnam’, has actually caused some irate travellers to wish they were deaf instead!
Meanwhile, as very often happens, my Apple Pencil had decided to separate from my iPad and fall down the gap between seat and wall. At my wits’ end on trying to retrieve it, I had to finally ask a member of the (reasonably English-speaking) cabin crew to help retrieve it. Her name was Beatrix — yes she was a local Vietnamese, as were the rest; why do you ask? — and she fished the thing out in no time. I thanked Beatrix and stepped out, with two sexy blue beasts on either side: the A350 (VN-A887) to the right and a 787-10 (VN-A872) to the left.
Quite the diverse mix of carriers, with the standard colours being peppered by the Air Hong Kong A300, Malaysia A330-300, EVA 777-300ER, Jetstar 787-8 and others. Mine was of the more mundane variety, but it had been a good flight nonetheless. I had one final glance at VN-A675 and turned into the domestic arrivals — I could already see the baggage belts!
Through a narrow corridor I went, turning past a bakery, and lo and behold! I was right at the luggage belts. Now of course this was a domestic terminal, hence no immigration, but it was still a strange feeling to see the planes on the tarmac on one side and the taxi rank on the other.
People — including Indians in large numbers — continued to line up to collect their bags, and mine arrived in ten minutes flat. Already I was beginning to appreciate just how SGN’s convenient tarmac-to-taxi location stood in stark contrast to some airports, where you have to nearly walk kilometres on moving walkways — Mumbai T2 (much as I love it otherwise) comes to mind — to get to Arrivals.
As you might expect, local companies took over all available advertising space.
Before I knew it, I was out and waiting for a Gojek — Vietnam (hallelujah!) thankfully has this much nicer-looking alternative to Grab — to pick me up. Now I was face to face with all those ads and banners that are more in tune with a city railway station than an international airport!
I crossed the road into the adjacent building with a Starbucks, and initially had some difficulty finding my Hyundai Accent — not to mention Vietnamese drivers in general have a terrible command of English (also the case in Indonesia and Thailand) — but eventually I did find the correct carpark lane and tumbled in.
On I went through the crowded, bustling streets of Vietnam’s largest city, and it really felt like a city, compared to the too-sanitised, too-pristine utopia that is Singapore. All the more so with the airport just minutes away from the city centre!
This was one of those flights which were perfectly pleasant but not all that memorable. Being accustomed to IndiGo’s penny-pinching hunger* makes the Indian traveller weary of low-cost carriers in general, but fortunately Southeast Asia has little of those problems, with AirAsia and VietJetAir leading the pack in the hot-meals and onboard goodies department. However, while I knew very well that Indians were visiting Vietnam en masse, the full-fledged way in which VietJetAir has been targeting them is nothing short of remarkable. From dedicated hot meals and snacks to leather seats, flying VJ really has been a godsend for them — though don’t expect those from Bengaluru, Chennai or Hyderabad to get service on VJ any time soon thanks to bilateral shenanigans.
(* A lot will change when IndiGo introduces a business-class product later this year, but so far the best you can get has been a very limited selection of heat-to-eat snacks.)
At a time when the Ryanairs and Spirits of the world are cramming in even thinner cushions like sardines, it sure feels gratifying to know that AK and VJ still care for hot meals and leather seats — something that the revamped Air India Express (formerly AirAsia India) has started to roll out. Even better, VJ knows perfectly well how to maintain a friendly, fun attitude — minus the bikinis! — without trying too hard to be hip and cool and with-it like Scoot, something which has completely backfired on the subsidiary of Singapore Airlines. Between the inflight magazine with unexpectedly well-written English articles, the tasty Thai chicken-and-fried-rice meal and the window seat, I did not miss the A330-300 one bit. If I have one regret, it would be my shortage of cash to buy one of the onboard teddy bears!
The airports themselves (HAN and SGN) are absolutely nothing to write home about — a far cry from SIN/KUL/BKK and CGK T3 — with their main saving grace being their relative closeness to the city. That rings particularly true for SGN, which is so close to the city centre (à la Berlin Tegel) that any complaints about its antiquity and crowdedness dissipate soon enough. I did appreciate the retail selection at Hanoi, modest though it was, and indeed it’s much better than what SGN’s domestic terminal presented two days later, as I returned to the northerly capital on the Vietnam Airlines 787-10.
Speaking of which, that 787-10 was the last of a whopping 27 flights in 2023, across 16 airlines — many of them new ones, including VietJetAir and Vietnam Airlines — and the third SkyTeam airline I’ve flown after KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Garuda Indonesia in June. (This June I’ve flown them again: SIN–CGK on the Garuda A330-900neo, CGK–KUL on a 787-9 that was a total comedy of errors, between the broken Wi-Fi and IFE and the substandard food!) As we near the halfway point of 2024, writing all these reports makes me reflect on just how — to rephrase from my previous reports — ‘eCXeptional’ a year 2023 was for personal travel, and Vietnam couldn’t have been a better country for the grand finale!
Les contributeurs de Flight-Report ont posté 21 avis concernant 3 compagnies sur la ligne Hanoi (HAN) → Ho Chi Minh City (SGN).
La compagnie qui obtient la meilleure moyenne est Bamboo Airways avec 7.6/10.
La durée moyenne des vols est de 1 heures et 47 minutes.
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