When will international flights resume?

salieri60 wrote:

Hi,

my wife and kid are stuck in VN, waiting for international flights to resume.
Does the government give any info on when they envisage to resume international flights?
As far as I understand, you can only fly to Korea and Japan at present.

Any news?
Thank you in advance.

Use Google Flights to check for a connecting flight.

It's not cheap, but flights are listed to places such as Rome, Italy

salieri60 wrote:

Hi,

my wife and kid are stuck in VN, waiting for international flights to resume.
Does the government give any info on when they envisage to resume international flights?
As far as I understand, you can only fly to Korea and Japan at present.

Any news?
Thank you in advance.

Hi.
It is possible to get to just about anywhere if you are prepared to pay extra and undergo some arduous travel conditions. As for international flights returning to some sort of normality the general opinion seems to be that this will not happen for several months, if at all in terms of the previous availability/variety of locations partly due to restrictions but also because of the commercial aspects. Long haul flights are extremely costly to airlines with most aircraft needing a 69%-73% occupancy just to break even with some much higher so until the tourist demand returns there is no point in the airlines offering routes even when allowed to fly them.

69 to 73%......

I flew back in to Vietnam just before the borders closed & there were 23 on the plane from Kuala Lumpur.       On the KL /Australia leg , the plane was maybe 30% .   

I can’t see aIrlines advertising regular  schedules for a while yet.    It will probably be a system where you nominate a few dates & the airline will let you know when they have enough onboard to make it worthwhile.

What a ballsup.

Ontheroad57 wrote:

69 to 73%......

I flew back in to Vietnam just before the borders closed & there were 23 on the plane from Kuala Lumpur.       On the KL /Australia leg , the plane was maybe 30% .   

I can’t see aIrlines advertising regular  schedules for a while yet.    It will probably be a system where you nominate a few dates & the airline will let you know when they have enough onboard to make it worthwhile.

What a ballsup.

Passenger levels had already started to decrease significantly on some routes just prior to the lockdown so unless there is a cargo/location motive then some flights would have certainly started to become commercially unviable anyway. With the additional losses attached to location lockdowns there has to be some doubt about the variety of long haul routes ever returning other than to a few major airport hubs.

salieri60 wrote:

Hi,

my wife and kid are stuck in VN, waiting for international flights to resume.
Does the government give any info on when they envisage to resume international flights?
As far as I understand, you can only fly to Korea and Japan at present.

Any news?
Thank you in advance.

Have you been in contact with your embassy?

I see info in the news and social media about specially arranged flights  for various specific nationalities nearly every day.

For example:
Canada to repatriate citizens stuck in Vietnam due to Covid-19
https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/canad … 91901.html

This could be a long shot,,but an old bloke here , a former merchant seaman says he got a ride to Australia on a container ship.

That’s what he tells me., said he did it legally & took a few weeks to get there. 

Could always become a stowaway. 🤓

Ontheroad57 wrote:

This could be a long shot,,but an old bloke here , a former merchant seaman says he got a ride to Australia on a container ship.

That’s what he tells me., said he did it legally & took a few weeks to get there. 

Could always become a stowaway. 🤓

Many container ships accept one or two paying passengers to defray expenses.  In 2005, my husband and I travelled on a freighter from Bilbao (the ship's port of origin was Hamburg) to Valparaiso and back.  We were the only two passengers on that ship for 79 days.

Ciambella wrote:

Ontheroad57 wrote:

This could be a long shot,,but an old bloke here , a former merchant seaman says he got a ride to Australia on a container ship.

That’s what he tells me., said he did it legally & took a few weeks to get there. 

Could always become a stowaway. 🤓

Many container ships accept one or two paying passengers to defray expenses.  In 2005, my husband and I travelled on a freighter from Bilbao (the ship's port of origin was Hamburg) to Valparaiso and back.  We were the only two passengers on that ship for 79 days.

As a merchant seaman myself, I can't imagine a more boring mode of transportation than to be stuck on a commercial ship with nothing to do for 79 days!

Suppobill wrote:

Ciambella wrote:

Ontheroad57 wrote:

This could be a long shot,,but an old bloke here , a former merchant seaman says he got a ride to Australia on a container ship.

That’s what he tells me., said he did it legally & took a few weeks to get there. 

Could always become a stowaway. 🤓

Many container ships accept one or two paying passengers to defray expenses.  In 2005, my husband and I travelled on a freighter from Bilbao (the ship's port of origin was Hamburg) to Valparaiso and back.  We were the only two passengers on that ship for 79 days.

As a merchant seaman myself, I can't imagine a more boring mode of transportation than to be stuck on a commercial ship with nothing to do for 79 days!

Somebody like Jerry Seinfeld might like that...

Suppobill wrote:

As a merchant seaman myself, I can't imagine a more boring mode of transportation than to be stuck on a commercial ship with nothing to do for 79 days!

We were busy every day of the trip.

For me, I had a lot of time for retrospection, for studying two new languages (Catalan and Burmese), for catching up with my digital stack of ebooks, and for learning a new cuisine (Burmese, practiced daily under the supervision of the ship's cook.)

For my husband, it was hours of capturing the antics of dolphins on video, playing ping pong with the engineer and the first mate, and learning to follow nautical chart (he was allowed on the bridge anytime he wished.)

At every port while the ship unloading train tires for the mines and loading copper from the mines, we came ashore into the midst of often poor neighbourhoods without a tourist in sight or a word of English spoken (my husband spoke Latin American Spanish so communication wasn't a problem).  We saw South America on foot, packed-to-the-roof buses, and taxis-without-floorboard.  We ate for pennies and didn't come across one T-shirt with the country name on the front.  We used Internet cafes and called home on public phones that charged by the minute. 

Once a month, we had BBQ with the entire crew on deck.  We did the message in a bottle.  The ship crisscrossed two hurricanes and we were thrown from one side to the other like a frisbee.  We spent 2.5 days traversing the entire Panama Canal -- locks, lakes, and all -- twice, the first time in total silence and the second time under torrential downpour.  We crossed the Equator and received initiation into the court of King Neptune.  We were under lockdown-and-light-out one night when a pirate boat approached us off the coast of Ecuador. 

It was among the best trips we've experienced in our lifetime of travelling.

Ciambella wrote:

Suppobill wrote:

As a merchant seaman myself, I can't imagine a more boring mode of transportation than to be stuck on a commercial ship with nothing to do for 79 days!

We were busy every day of the trip.

For me, I had a lot of time for retrospection, for studying two new languages (Catalan and Burmese), for catching up with my digital stack of ebooks, and for learning a new cuisine (Burmese, practiced daily under the supervision of the ship's cook.)

For my husband, it was hours of capturing the antics of dolphins on video, playing ping pong with the engineer and the first mate, and learning to follow nautical chart (he was allowed on the bridge anytime he wished.)

At every port while the ship unloading train tires for the mines and loading copper from the mines, we came ashore into the midst of often poor neighbourhoods without a tourist in sight or a word of English spoken (my husband spoke Latin American Spanish so communication wasn't a problem).  We saw South America on foot, packed-to-the-roof buses, and taxis-without-floorboard.  We ate for pennies and didn't come across one T-shirt with the country name on the front.  We used Internet cafes and called home on public phones that charged by the minute. 

Once a month, we had BBQ with the entire crew on deck.  We did the message in a bottle.  The ship crisscrossed two hurricanes and we were thrown from one side to the other like a frisbee.  We spent 2.5 days traversing the entire Panama Canal -- locks, lakes, and all -- twice, the first time in total silence and the second time under torrential downpour.  We crossed the Equator and received initiation into the court of King Neptune.  We were under lockdown-and-light-out one night when a pirate boat approached us off the coast of Ecuador. 

It was among the best trips we've experienced in our lifetime of travelling.

I guess after 35 years I'm a bit jaded!

As far as I heard and looked, many airlines are already offering connections to BKK, SIN and JKT starting from first week of July. I myself have just booked a flight on SIA on mid July to SIN and from there to Germany. Prices about 2.5 to 3 times as before the pandemic.
As of today Thai Airways filed for bankruptcy. But I am sure they will just use this to get rid of old debts and restart soon with a much smaller fleet and crew.

As I understood you are"standing passenger" for the country.

First which country you need to travel

Second, as per international guidelines, you should immediately contact your country embassy or consulate in Vietnam ( may be in Ho Chi Minh or Ha Noi city) and they will arrange special transport depends on available strength discussion with Vietnam government.

Please  register with your country's embassy first.

If your answer was for my comment (?):
All these actions already have been taken many weeks before.

As per international procedure, until country starts operate passenger flight service, you are standing passenger and Embassy only the authority to coordinate with local government to organise to transfer the passengers.

this is not true.
Anybody at least who can afford the prices can travel now outside to Korea by Korean Airlines or by Asiana. From Korea there are outbound flights to many other countries.

It’s only for the prohibitive pricing that this might be restricted to wealthy people or company people getting paid the fares.

All EU countries e.g. have closed their official chartered taking home programs arranged by their embassies since mid of April.