Vietnamese airlines look to leverage accelerating rebound in Vietnam-China market

Vietnam's two main airlines are boosting their service to China, either through new scheduled routes or strengthened partnerships, as they seek to further build on the robust recovery of the country's most important tourist market.

Vietjet is adding to its limited number of scheduled routes to large mainland China markets, augmenting its extensive charter network in China.

Meanwhile, Vietnam Airlines is looking to upgrade its partnership with China Southern Airlines to a joint venture.

Mainland China was Vietnam's leading source of annual visitors before the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is on track to reclaim the leading spot. While Chinese outbound travel has generally recovered slowly, Vietnam has seen a stronger resurgence in such traffic than many other markets.

This market is in the spotlight at the moment, as a high-level Vietnamese government delegation has visited Beijing to emphasise the strong links between the countries. Both Vietnam Airlines and VietJet have timed announcements to coincide with the visit.