jgmc

I love to travel, and really hate to fly! So annoying. How is Vietnam Air? Thinking of flying from Taipei to Hanoi in April.

julies

We flew them from Saigon to hanoi and found them to be just fine. In fact, we were even served a meal on the 2 hour flight--unheard of for those of us who live in the US.

TracyB

Just flew from HKG to HCMC, throughout Vietnam and Hanoi to HKG and found them to be superb!! Infact i liked them better than Cathay Pacific!!

cruisinred

No problems at all. Planes were quite new (Airbus I think), service was friendly and even included a meal on short flights. I would have zero reservations about flying with them again. If you're in the US, you can book Vietnam air flights on expedia (although they cost a bit less if booked in Vietnam).

Cookiepuss

I just returned from Vietnam and I flew about 5 times on Vietnam Air - I found them very efficient. Flights were on time almost always, the only time it was not, they were able to put us on an earlier flight! Most of our flights were the smaller planes, with just two rows of two seats each.
Laos Airlines, on the other hand, made me nervous - for no real scientific reason. I think it was because my older guide book mentioned that at the time of writing, US government warned against using them because their fleet was not up to international standards. I just told myself that the book must be outdated now (to protect my sanity as I am a nervous flyer.)

janev

Pacific Airlines also fly this route (budget airline) - but don't know how good or not their aircraft is.

deptrai

[Just flew from HKG to HCMC]

Mind if I ask what you paid for this single flight? I'm looking to do this later this year and finding prices relatively high. I'm considering routing through Singapore to save $.

trumps

Having just come back from Indochina & used Vietnam Airlines & Lao Airlines for our internal flights I would like to tell you of our experiences with these airlines. We had each Hotel reconfirm each flight for us & we were staying in good hotels Hilton Sofitiel, Sheraton etc. The first flight with Vietnam Airlines was fine only 30 mins late, the second delayed by 4 hours & the 3rd despite being reconfirmed left 2 hours early so we missed it. Vietnam Airlines did put us in a Hotel overnight & provided all meals & transfers without us asking but we missed out on a day in Laos. My advice is reconfirm the day before & again the day of the flight, Lao Airlines on the other hand were all new planes & ran to time.

jgmc

Thanks everyone. I appreciate the input and will be very careful about flight departure times. It is safety that always rattles me - even when I know it should not be a problem. Just a nervous flier!

TracyB

deptrai...i paid alot to fly from HKG to SGN and then Hanoi back to HGK...i could have flown all the way from western Canada to Vietnam for almost the same price!!! However, we had 1 free ticket...So we justified paying the price that way...Anyhow the fare was about 600.00 U.S..Yikes..but it just had to work that way!!

WinterTravel

We booked Vietnam Air tickets via Expedia and regretted it. Expedia for some reason uses China Airlines to issue the tickets (the paper tickets come from Expedia on China Airlines stock). We had refundable tickets, but had a huge problem with Expedia when trying to claim a refund (which Expedia admitted we were due) because they claimed that it should come from China Airlines. We spent countless hours, fedex fees, etc... which was even more frustrating because of the premium we'd paid to buy the tickets on Expedia.

You might consider booking via a travel agent in Asia as an alternative if you are flying via a gateway where you could pick up your tickets(we booked other Vietnam Air tickets via a travel agent through our hotel concierge in Singapore and that worked out much better).