Privately owned Vietnamese start-up carrier VietJet plans to appoint a CEO next month and launch operations in December using leased Boeing 737-700/800s.
The airline plans to start flying in December with “two or three aircraft” and “the regulations require that we have five aircraft within 12 months”, acting CEO Robert Hughes says from the Vietnamese capital Hanoi, where VietJet is based.
He says the company has been negotiating with several undisclosed leasing companies.
“We like both the 737-700 and 737-800…and are likely to start with the -700” because it has more range and being smaller is easier to fill, says Hughes.
“The -700 has the range to go to Japan and we want to go to Japan,” he says, adding that to begin with the carrier will operate on domestic trunk routes such as Hanoi-Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi-Danang but it wants to launch international services as soon as possible.
VietJet will be competing against the national carrier Vietnam Airlines, which is a full-service operator, and it will also be up against Vietnam’s Pacific Airlines, which is being re-branded Jetstar Pacific and being repositioned as a low-cost carrier in line with Qantas Airways’ low-cost outfit Jetstar.
Hughes says VietJet will have a low operating cost base but will stop short of being a strict low-cost carrier and will be positioned “in between Jetstar and Vietnam Airlines”.
He says VietJet will be positioned similarly to Virgin Blue in Australia. Virgin Blue started in 2000 as a low-cost carrier but in an effort to win over business travellers later altered its business model and now offers some frills on a user-pays basis.
VietJet, which received an aviation licence late last year from the Ministry of Transport, is adopting some of the principles of the low-cost carrier business model in an effort to cut costs, namely having only one aircraft type in the fleet.
But it will move away from that model in some instances by, for example, having a two-class cabin comprising of ‘economy’ and ‘premium economy’, says Hughes.
VietJet is 100% locally owned but it will have a number of foreigners in key management positions.
Hughes says VietJet needs to employ foreigners because there is a general shortage of local managers with the skills and experience required, plus VietJet wants to draw on international expertise.
But he says the foreign managers coming on board will be required to groom a local to eventually take over because VietJet’s owners want the airline to eventually be locally managed.
Next month the airline plans to appoint a CEO, says Hughes, adding that it is also about to appoint a chief financial officer and is scouting for a head of commercial.
These positions will be filled by foreigners and all will be aviation “industry veterans”, adds Hughes, who is also a general director of T&C Group and plans to step aside as acting CEO of the airline.
T&C is a Vietnamese conglomerate involved in other industry sectors, such as car distributorship and construction equipment importing. It owns the airline with one other Vietnamese conglomerate.
The other issue the airline faces is recruiting and training pilots and ensuring its aircraft will be well maintained.
Hughes says VietJet will be employing foreign pilots and has signed a contract with the Irish office of recruitment company Parc Aviation.
The carrier has already appointed a head of maintenance and engineering and plans to handle line maintenance in-house. But as for other maintenance work it has prepared a request for proposals which will be issued this week to maintenance, repair and overhaul firms, says Hughes.
According to Parc Aviation’s website the recruitment firm is looking for 737-700/800/900 first officers and captains to work in Vietnam who already have three years experience.
The recruitment firm is also looking to recruit Airbus A330, Fokker 70 and ATR 72 captains to work in Vietnam. Vietnam Airlines operates these aircraft types.
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
Source: FlightGlobal.com
