Vietnamese carriers replicate their India template for Bengaluru and Hyderabad – NetworkThoughts
Over the last few weeks, Vietnamese national carrier Vietnam Airlines opened reservations for flights to Bengaluru and Hyderabad. The new flights come up after the changes to Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA) which were reported by the media a few months ago. The increase in flights is driven by more and more Indians traveling to ASEAN even as we struggle to attract Foreign Tourists, with the numbers continuing to be below the pre-COVID arrivals even in 2024.
The addition of flights to Bengaluru and Hyderabad by the two Vietnamese carriers would take the total count of flights between India and Vietnam to 82 weekly flights each way, shows data shared by Cirium, an aviation analytics company, exclusively for this post.
Flashback
IndiGo was the first carrier to start non-stop flights between India and Vietnam in 2019. The airline soon re-jigged its Kolkata hub to ensure connectivity from Vietnam to Dubai and Doha, pre-pandemic. This also coincided with VietJet launching flights to Delhi, immediately after IndiGo and expanding service to India. Vietnam Airlines joined in with flights to Delhi and Mumbai.
VietJet went aggressive with flights to Da Nang and Phu Quoc but had to rejig its network later. The bilateral rights were exhausted by the Vietnamese side by 2023. In June 2024, Air India entered the Delhi – Ho Chi Minh City route with focus on feed to Europe.
There was a pattern amongst the Vietnamese carriers, that of serving both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City from Delhi and Mumbai, by sharing the frequencies. VietJet offers thrice weekly services to Hanoi from Mumbai and four times a week from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Airlines offers four times a week service to Hanoi from Mumbai and thrice a week to Ho Chi Minh City. This distribution has meant that both these airlines are present at Mumbai and Delhi and offer connectivity to the two main cities in Vietnam. The template is now repeated at Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
The new flights
From Hyderabad, Vietnam Airlines will offer thrice weekly flights to Hanoi, while VietJet will offer twice weekly flights to Ho Chi Minh City. From Bengaluru, Vietnam Airlines will offer four times a week service to Hanoi, while VietJet will offer thrice weekly service. As and when more rights become available, an expansion would definitely be on the cards to ensure that both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are connected from Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
What does the market look like?
The Vietnamese carriers dominate the route, operating 80% of the total seats and 74% of total frequency. Vietjet operates 40 flights each way each week and takes the cake in terms of both frequencies and seats on offer.
Network Thoughts
Where does the market go from here on? IndiGo has not expanded beyond Kolkata and is happy to route Indian passengers via Kolkata, while Vietnamese carriers make inroads (and fail at times). Vietnam is a tourist destination with limited diaspora and hence flights to Kochi or Trichy were not successful while AirAsia and Batik Air Malaysia can fill up multiple daily flights to Trichy.
Will Air India add Hanoi to its network in future? Will IndiGo take advantage of Chennai or will it want to compete with the Vietnamese carriers from Delhi / Mumbai / Bengaluru or Hyderabad? It looks like there will be status quo for a while, before things move on this front with a lot of seasonal variations taking place going forward.
Found this article informative? Think of supporting Network Thoughts with Power of 10
Running this website incurs some cost, along with the data sourced for analytics. If you have liked this article, consider paying INR 10 via UPI. The site will continue to be free. This will help with the maintenance, upkeep and funding the research. You can also pay via Debit or Credit card by clicking on this link.
You can support Network Thoughts by ordering Network Thoughts baggage tags !
Follow NetworkThoughts on X (Formerly Twitter), Bsky, Facebook, Telegram and YouTube.
