Vietnam Airlines carries fewer passengers in 1998
HANOI - Vietnam's flag carrier
carried four percent fewer passengers in 1998 than in
the previous year, Vietnam Airlines figures showed on
Wednesday.
A company official said some 2.48 million passengers
and 40,300 tonnes of cargo were carried during the
year, down from 2.59 million passengers and 45,000
tonnes of cargo a year earlier.
``The number of passengers in 1998 fell due to the
continuing impact of the Asian financial crisis,'' the
official told Reuters.
After its traffic grew 35 percent annually in the early
1990s, Vietnam Airlines in 1997 posted losses for the
first time when it said it finished the year $3.6 million in
the red and passenger growth slowed to just two
percent.
Financial data on 1998 operations was not immediately
available.
The official said the airline target for 1999 was to
maintain at the same level the number of passengers
travelling on international routes, which in 1998 stood at
around 900,000.
He added that it was hoped to increase the number of
passengers on domestic routes by between two and
three percent.
Vietnam Airlines, with three Boeing 767-300s, 10
Airbus A320s, six ATR-72s and two Fokker F70s, has
one of the youngest fleets in Asia.
The airline grounded its last remaining Soviet-built
aircraft after one of its Tupolev 134Bs crashed in
September 1997 in Phnom Penh, killing 64 people.
The official said in the past year two of the Tupolevs
had been brought back into service for carrying cargo
on domestic and international routes.
Reuters - January 05, 1999.
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