Government okayed for Bamboo Airways to extend fleet to 30

The permission has been signed by Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung on August 14, allowing the airline owned by FLC Group to operate a bigger fleet, with the inclusion of narrow-body jets of Airbus A319, A320 and A321 as well as wide-body ones of Airbus A330 and A350 or Boeing B787.

Earlier on in June, Bamboo Airways received the in-principle approval from the Ministry of Transport (MoT) to extend its fleet to 30 aircraft by 2023. One of the requirements for the airline was to enhance its chartered capital from VND 700 billion ($30.43 million) to VND1.3 trillion ($56.52 million) and it has been able meet that a few months back.

FLC Group chairman Trinh Van Quyet noted at the company shareholders’ meeting in June that upsizing Bamboo Airways’ fleet to 30 could eventually help it make profit as soon as the first quarter of 2020.

While counting on the approval from MOT and the government in the past months, Bamboo Airways had already prepared the appropriate human resources and infrastructure to accommodate the fleet of up to 40 aircraft.

According to Quyet, the airline now has over 300 pilots and 80 per cent of them are expatriates. Each commercial aircraft would need between 11 to 14 pilots on average, depending on the type of the aircraft, to maximise it utilisation. Given the current number of pilots, Bamboo Airways has had enough pilots to crew their bigger aircraft fleet.

According to MOT, the country would need 340 airplanes to serve some 85 million passengers by 2023. The local airline industry is forecast to grow by 16 per cent a year on average during the period of 2015-2020 and 8 per cent a year in the following period to 2030. To operate effectively during these periods, each airline is expected to maintain a fleet of at least 25-30 jets.

Meanwhile, as part of their development plan to 2023, national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines and its low cost airline Jetstar have targeted at upgrading their fleet to 155-160 jets in total while Vietjet seeks to raise its jets to 106.

Established last July, Bamboo Airways is Vietnam’s fifth airline. It began commercial operations in January and will record its 10,000th flight this month. The airline currently has international routes to Japan, Korea and China.

In February, Bamboo Airways announced its order of ten 787-9 Dreamliners valued at $3 billion, aiming at serving the long-haul flights connecting Vietnam to other destinations in Asia, Europe and North America.