Vietjet Air plans to start flying to the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Australia using the 20 Airbus A321XLR aircraft it has ordered.
“When we receive the airplanes with the longer range, then we can serve up to 60 percent of the global population,” Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, CEO of the budget carrier, told Reuters on the sidelines of the CAPA Asia Aviation Summit.
The A321XLRs are scheduled to be delivered from 2023. Thao was quoted by the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, which named Vietjet the “Asia Pacific Low-Cost Airline of the Year” at the summit, as saying the carrier plans to add 10 international routes every year.
Vietjet currently flies on 40 domestic and 66 international routes. It operates 385 flights daily within Vietnam and to places such as Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, mainland China, Thailand, Myanmar, and Malaysia.
Vietnam’s fleet of over 200 aircraft last year could quadruple by 2038, U.S. aircraft maker Boeing said.
Its 21 state-run airports served 106 million passengers in 2018, up 13 percent from a year earlier.