Bikini Airline Expected to Finalize Order for 50 Airbus A321neos on Friday

VietJet’s CEO became Southeast Asia’s first self-made female billionaire. The airline is a discount carrier flying narrowbody aircraft mostly domestically although with several routes now into Asia.

Five years ago the airline was fined 20 million Dong over unapproved inflight entertainment. It wasn’t a problem with the installation of a seatback video system. Instead, 5 bikini-clad candidates in a local beauty contest performed a dance onboard the airline’s inaugural flight to Nha Trang.

Since the 3-minute show had not been approved in advance, it was deemed a violation of aviation and security regulations. And the airline was fine — the equivalent of $959.

Since then they’ve branded themselves the bikini airline. And the airline’s CEO sees the campaigns and onboard stunts as empowering. Vietnam has a very conservative culture, and the public bikini stunts rebel against traditional notions of female dress in that society.

Although when they start service to some Islamic destinations they have to promise those governments that their flight attendants will be fully clothed.


Inflight Food and Beverage are at the Core of VietJet Hospitality


Here They’re Highlighting Lost Luggage


Ground Staff Meet Each Flight Promptly

VietJet will firm an order for 50 A321neos on Friday, aircraft with a list price of $6.5 billion but assume they aren’t paying more than about half that.

Until they ordered 100 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft during US President Obama’s visit to Vietnam in 2016, VietJet had been exclusively Airbus customers, currently operating 56 Airbus narrowbodies.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Comments

  1. They should buy A350s and start flying to LAX. The Vietnamese-American community would no doubt greatly prefer to fly a renegade carrier that tweaks the government than one that is owned and controlled by it.

Comments are closed.