Vietnam Airlines has been trialling night flights to try and cope with higher demand for flights, price caps on airfares, and demands for cheaper flights. This has not been as successful as anticipated with the head of Vietnam Airlines telling a forum this week that they had to cancel 10 percent of their night flights due to a lack of interest.
Of note, speaking on the topic of night flights, the head of Vietravel–a local tourism services providers that also operates several aircraft–at the same forum, argued that people who fly for recreational purposes don’t care about the price of an airfare.
‘Tourism is a market for people with money,’ he said.
This is an interesting observation in that airfares are regulated by the government and there has been extensive media coverage of late of said ticket prices. There was even a brief investigation of ticket prices by the Vietnam Aviation Administration earlier this year although no price gouging was found.
In this context, it’s not exactly clear why airline ticket prices have become such a huge focus in the local media and this could suggest that said coverage is slightly disproportionate to the problem it purports to cover.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that the local aviation industry has been having a difficult time of late and this may be simply adding to its woes.