Passengers at Noi Bai International Airport.(Photo: VNA)
Hanoi – The total number of air passengers passing
through domestic airports will reach 80% of the peak in 2019, said Dinh
Viet Thang, director of the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV).
He said passenger volume through Vietnamese airports reached more than 81
million passengers in the ten months of 2022, with 100 million forecast for the
whole year. In 2019, the number was 120 million.
Vietnamese airlines carried 40 million passengers, and it is expected that the
total number of passengers transported by domestic airlines in 2022 will reach
55 million.
The domestic market has experienced high growth and can be considered one of
the best post-pandemic growth markets. However, the international market has
only recovered about 50%, said CAAV.
Thang told local media: “The restoration of flight routes in some key
markets, especially China, is still facing difficulties due to the COVID-19
pandemic. The negotiation to reconnect the flight route with this market is
being actively implemented. Some markets such as the Republic of Korea, Japan,
and Taiwan have opened, but travel demand is still very low.”
Although the recovery results of international aviation have not been as
expected, he calculated: “The bright spot for the international market in
the first ten months is that we have opened the Indian market with a high
production volume related to good shipping activities.”
Pham Viet Dung, Chairman of the Vietnam Aviation Business Association, and Chairman
of Vietnam Air Traffic Management Corporation, said the local aviation
market was on the way to recovery but not yet even in all segments. The
domestic market has fully recovered, but the international market has recovered
very slowly. Domestic passenger transport in 2022 increased by 12% compared
to 2019.
On the other hand, international freight transport increased, but domestic
cargo decreased. Therefore, industry revenue is assessed as disproportionate
due to the increase in fuel prices and some input prices, said CAAV.
Currently, businesses in infrastructure transportation have experienced a
strong recovery, while airlines and passenger transport suppliers still face
many difficulties.
In the first half of 2022, Vietnam Airlines Group, including Vietnam Airlines,
Pacific Airlines and VASCO, achieved a net revenue of nearly 30 trillion VND (1.3
billion USD) but still lost nearly 5.2 trillion VND.
According to the experts, airlines and passenger transport providers still had
to deal with the pandemic’s adverse problems, especially the cash flow imbalance
in two years when their operations were mostly frozen.
At the same time, rapidly increasing flights were seen for
coming Tet (Lunar New
Year) as local airlines race to increase 1.7 million seats to supply,
including more than 1.1 million seats from Vietnam Airlines Corporation
that consists of Vietnam Airlines, Pacific Airlines and
Vasco and more than 600,000 seats from Vietjet Air.
CAAV said that on the occasion of the new Year of the
Cat, from December 15 to the end of January 15, airlines will increase
seats to serve people’s travel needs.
As the national carrier, Vietnam Airlines reported an after-tax loss
of nearly 2.5 trillion VND in the third quarter of 2022, down 985 billion VND
compared to the loss of the third quarter of last year.
In the first nine months of 2022, Vietnam Airlines Corporation has
operated more than 106,000 flights, up 118% over the same period last
year.
Aviation activity recovered when the blockade orders because of
COVID-19 were lifted, helping Vietnam Airlines’ consolidated net revenue in the
third quarter of 2022 to reach 21.15 trillion VND, 4.5 times higher than
last year. As a result, the corporation moved from a gross loss of more than 3 trillion VND
in the third quarter of 2021 to a gross profit from sales and services
of 165 billion VND in the last quarter.
The corporation said that the international shipping market was still
recovering slowly, plus negative factors such as high fuel prices, the
prolonged Russia-Ukraine conflict and financial risks of exchange
rates and interest rates, so production and business activities would
continue to suffer losses in the third quarter and the first nine months of
2022.
A representative of Vietnam Airlines forecast the international
market would gradually recover, giving the corporation’s production
and business activities more positive results in 2023.
Data from the finance and enterprise system WiChart shows that the number of
international visitors to Vietnam in October by air was nearly 434,000, an
increase of 11.4% compared to the previous month and 51 times higher
than the same period in 2021 when the whole country was in lockdown
against the pandemic.
The total number of passengers transported by air in October was more than 5.14
million, 28 times higher than last October. In July 2022, amid the peak summer
tourist season, Vietnam’s aviation industry transported nearly 5.9 million
passengers, the highest since the beginning of the pandemic, said WiChart./.
