US airline starts Vietnam flights
The first commercial flight from the United States to Vietnam since the war nearly 30 years ago has taken off from San Francisco.
The new service to Ho Chi Minh City, run by United Airlines, will fly daily. The United States normalised diplomatic relations with Vietnam in the 1990s, but flights were not then re-instated. The last US flight left Vietnam in April of 1975 as communist troops surrounded the city, which was then called Saigon.
Charitable act
At the time, the country director for the American airline Pan-Am was hatching a plot. He wanted to get the local Pan-Am employees and their immediate relatives out of the country before the communists arrived. But in order to clear the bureaucratic hurdles, he had to legally adopt them. And so he became the adoptive father to more than 300 Vietnamese civilians, an act of charity that was celebrated in the Hollywood film, Last Flight Out. On 24 April, a rather overloaded 747 left Saigon's Than Son Nhat airport.
Now things have changed.
Passengers flying in and out of Vietnam on an American plane will no longer be refugees fleeing from war, but tourists, business travellers and some of America's large Vietnamese community. America and Vietnam only normalised diplomatic relations in the mid-1990s, and ties between the two have been rather slow in coming. But the resumption of commercial flights is further evidence that the relationship between the two former enemies is now really taking off.
By Bethan Jinkinson - BBC News - December 10, 2004
Commercial flight to Vietnam first from U.S. since 1975
SAN FRANCISCO — United Airlines yesterday took off on the first commercial flight to Vietnam from the United States since 1975. The flight is the first such service by an American air carrier since the end of the Vietnam War and comes amid growing trade and tourism ties between the nations. The inaugural United flight from San Francisco to Ho Chi Minh City carried U.S. and Vietnamese officials, business executives and others, including actor David Hasselhoff, who was traveling to Vietnam with a charity group.
Flight UA869, a Boeing 747, was scheduled to stop in Hong Kong before landing late today in the city formerly known as Saigon. United will begin the flight daily between Ho Chi Minh City and San Francisco on Sunday. It has no plans to expand flights to the Washington area. State-owned Vietnam Airlines has said it may begin flying to the West Coast of the United States, probably San Francisco, in late 2005. Speaking in July shortly before the end of his term as U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, Raymond Burghard hailed the beginning of air links as an important landmark on the road to the full normalization of relations.
"Direct air connections are the next logical steps and this should further increase trade, tourism and cultural relations between our two peoples," he said. United, the second largest U.S. carrier, says it is hoping to cash in on a mix of Vietnamese-Americans and their friends and relatives traveling in both directions, a growing number of Vietnam-bound U.S. tourists and expanding business travel. More than 1.3 million Vietnamese live in the United States, many of whom fled the Southeast Asian nation after 1975. In recent years, the Vietnamese government has been encouraging them to return in a bid to tap their business acumen and financial resources.
"Certainly, the market holds a huge amount of potential; it is the fastest growing aviation market in Asia right now and probably one of the two fastest economies," said Stephan Roth, spokesman for United parent company UAL Corp. Vietnamese air travel is expected to grow 10.5 percent per year for the next 10 years, according to the International Air Transport Association, as the communist nation's economy nearly matches the pace of China.
Mr. Roth, however, said the new service would take time to show profits. "For a market that has not had service before, you need to build up the service," he said. "You have to build up demand a little bit in order to make it economically viable." In October, United, which filed for bankruptcy protection in late 2002, announced that it would start reducing the number of its domestic flights, while increasing its more profitable international routes.
Many in California's Vietnamese emigre community largely oppose relations with the communist government of Hanoi. Washington and Hanoi established diplomatic ties in 1995, two decades after the end of the conflict in Indochina that cost the lives of more than 58,000 Americans and around three million Vietnamese. The airline, fighting to emerge from bankruptcy protection, reworked its ads for Vietnamese-language radio after San Francisco stations suggested changes to take account of political sensitivities, said United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski.
Draft advertisements had referred to Vietnam's most populous city as "Ho Chi Minh City," using the formal name that it was given in 1976 when it was renamed after the revolutionary founder of the communist republic. Ms. Urbanski said the advertisements will now refer to simply Vietnam or "Ho Chi Minh City — also known as Saigon." "We wanted to please all our of customers so we will use both names," she said. The last U.S. flight to leave Vietnam was by defunct Pan American in 1975.
The Washington Times - December 10, 2004
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