One month ago, our honorable team was created with professional members, instructed by Mr. Ngo Sy Anh – CNJP acting GM, Mr. Morita Jungo – CNJP Sales Manager, Mr. Horiuchi – Project manager, Ms. Hashimoto – Project Leader, Ms. Sumi, Mr. Tamura, Mr. Nakamura, and Mr. Hasegawa together with other staff from AD/PR, Reservation and Airport. Our team works closely with the HDQ team including members from Marketing Sales Department and Corporate Planning Department.
We called it “Special Flight” because it has no precedent, the procedure was new and different from normal commercial flights:
- It was operated in response to the restrictions on international regular commercial flights by the Vietnamese government due to the spread of the COVID-19.
- Its operation was based on the Passenger’s application which was subject to the approval of the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam.
- Landing permit was issued on flight-by-flight basis by the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) when all the necessary documents were ready. The permit was granted very closed to the departure date.
- VNA Japan collects payment and issues tickets.
Since the team was created, we immediately started working to:
- Create Vietnam Airlines Special Flight Information
- Create Vietnam Airlines special flight handling procedure
- Create a special flight fwere contract and distribute it to the sales network
- Organize a Special flight webinar held on September 6, 2021, for Handling T/A
- Post Vietnam Airlines’ Special Flight Information on the website of the Embassy of Japan
- Promote on SNS channels.
Despite we have tried hard, all the team feel worried and less confident whether we can fly or not as well as facing many difficulties in the effort to make the first “Special Flight” such as unfixed flight schedule, operation cost issue and most of the required documentation get landing permit was in Vietnamese resulting in passengers booked and canceled many times.
The prerequisite to getting the passenger landing permit was a set of documents such as Approval of People’s Committee of City/Province, Approval of Immigration Department, Approval of Health Department of City/Province, Isolation Hotel Booking Confirmation, Pick-up Confirmation from airport to hotel, International Health Insurance, or Company’s Commitment Letter (which commits to paying for treatment in case expert was infected with SARS-CoV-2), SARS-CoV-2 Negative Certificate (in English) taken by using Real time-PCR technique within 03 days before the date of entry into Vietnam and submit to VNA via travel agency by the deadline.
We highly appreciate our Headquarters’ kind support to check documents and coordinate well with CAAV for this first special flight as well as building the working process that helps later flights more smoothly.
As a result, the first special flight with 4 business passengers landed in Ho Chi Minh City with our hospitality. We were even happier when we received a warm message from the next day: “Good morning. Arrived safely last night. We were the first Japanese to fly to Vietnam on a special flight of Vietnam Airlines (we were the only ones who boarded the flight), so we received a generous service. After arriving, it was a full attendance and all the procedures were completed in about 10 minutes after arrival. Thank you for your support”.
The Japanese family on the first special flight.
We have learned and experienced a lot through our first Passenger flight. It was the initial step on the way to resume regular flights in the coming time. We were confident that with our strong teamwork, we can overcome any difficulties to make Vietnam Airlines reach further.
Vietnam Airlines’ Japanese branch
