Air Mekong faces clipped wings over lack of flights

There are no signs Air Mekong is resuming operation - Photo: Hoai Nam

The Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam (CAAV) early this month asked the carrier to report on its plan to resume flights and also warned that its licence would be revoked if it didn’t start flying again by the end of this month.

Vo Huy Cuong, deputy director of CAAV, told the media last week that the state management authority had not yet received a response from Air Mekong.

The warning is in accordance with the Vietnam’s aviation regulations which stipulate that an airline would have its license revoked it suspended commercial flights for more than a year.

Air Mekong is a subsidiary of Quang Ninh-headquartered Ha Long Investment and Development Company, better known as BIM Group, and is the second private airline to fly in the Vietnam market. The first was Indochina Airlines, which went bankrupt only a year after opening.

Air Mekong lifted off in 2011, operating 13 domestic routes using four Bombardier CRJ900 aircraft and ran until February 2013 when it announced it was suspending commercial flights “to restructure the fleet”.

But in an interview with Forbes Vietnam late last year, chairman Doan Quoc Viet admitted the carrier had suffered huge losses and grounding the planes was a difficult but necessary decision for him.

When it suspended flights, Viet said Air Mekong would soon return in an impressive way. But a year passed and there has been no news of a resurgence. On its official website, Air Mekong has maintained its suspended status though promises that it “will announce the resumption of commercial flights”.

Brendan Sobie, chief analyst and chief representative of the Centre for Aviation in Southeast Asia, believed the opening of a new airport in Phu Quoc, where Air Mekong was very active, had a significant impact on the airline.

Specifically, Phu Quoc was previously only accessible by regional carriers but when the airport expanded it opened to airlines such as VietJet that could land its larger, and cheaper, A320s and has thus consumed the smaller carrier’s market share.