More than one month before the holiday, Van Hieu from the northen province of Quang Ninh, a worker at the Tan Thuan Industrial Zone in HCM City, told zing.vn online newspaper that he struggled to buy a ticket home.
According to him, during the previous years, he had to book flight tickets two months in advance to travel to Hanoi at an affordable cost. However, this year, cheap flight tickets are not available. Meanwhile, ticket prices of flights in the days ahead of the Tet holiday, February 9 to 12 (December 24 to 27 in the lunar calendar), are rising, even among the budget carriers.
“Flight tickets at the end of the lunar year are around 3 millionVND (130 USD). Budget carriers offer slightly cheaper prices with limited luggage. If I buy extra check-in luggage, the cost is similar to that of other airlines,” he said.
The recent survey by zing.vn on domestic airlines’ online booking system showed that almost all cheap flight tickets during the Tet holiday are sold out, even for the business class.
Vietnam Airlines, for example, sells tickets from 3.6 million VND (158 USD) for the economy class and 6.6 million VND (290 USD) for the business class on the HCM City – Hanoi route on February 7 (December 22 in the lunar calendar). Flights on the following days are fully booked.
On the same route, all promotional tickets of Vietjet Air till February 1 (December 16 in the lunar calendar) are sold out. The cheapest ticket available is at 1.4 million VND (62 USD) for the economy class.
Meanwhie, for the converse route, from Hanoi to HCM City, ticket prices are from 968,000 VND (43 USD)/ticket/way for Vietnam Airlines, 399,000 VND (17.5 USD)/ticket/way for Vietjet Air and 500,000 VND (22 USD)/ticket/way for Jetstar Pacific.
According to the Vietnam Aviation Administration (VAA), domestic airlines strictly obey the government’s regulation on domestic air fare management. There is no case of exceeding the ceiling price of 3.683 million VND (162 USD)/ticket/way.
