Vietnam Airlines is searching for foreign partners for an aircraft maintenance and engineering joint venture.
The carrier hopes to find partners and to secure government approval for the venture this year. Vietnam Airlines plans to hold at least 50% of the company, which will operate from the airports at Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.
The plan is understood to be part of Vietnam Airlines' broader restructuring strategy, started in the middle of last year after two years of falling profits. It has cut its workforce by around 20%, from about 5,000, and closed some domestic and international routes.
Compared with 1997, the airline suffered a 4% decline in passenger traffic last year, to 2.48 million carried, as well as a drop in cargo traffic, from 45,000t in 1997 to 40,000t. Until then, the carrier had enjoyed several years of 30% growth in cargo traffic.
In the longer term, the company hopes to expand into joint ventures in the hotel, tourism and banking sectors. The new ventures may be funded by loans or by the sale of equity in the airline's subsidiaries.
The carrier, which operates 30 Airbus, Antonov, ATR, Boeing, Fokker, Ilyushin, Tupolev and Yakovlev aircraft, has recently extended a codeshare agreement with Korean Air, covering passenger and cargo services.
It plans to introduce a three- times weekly cargo service from the end of this month between Ho Chi Minh City and Cambodian capital Phnom Penh.
Source: Flight International
