Many airlines in Vietnam have accelerated recruiting pilots and other positions to feed their operation recovery plans as the country reopened all its international routes on February 15, after nearly two years of disruption due to COVID-19.

Carriers such as Vietjet Air, Bamboo Airways, and Vietravel Airlines have recently published recruitment advertisements for captains, first officers, pilots, flight attendants and other staff to speed up their resumed services.

Bamboo Airways has announced on its website a plan to enroll captains and first officers for B787 wide-body aircraft at monthly salaries of US$13,300 and $8,000, respectively.

The corresponding salary rates for narrow-body aircraft such as Airbus and Embraer 190 are $10,450 and $6,300 per month.

Vietjet Air has also unveiled its plan to recruit the same positions for Airbus A320F and A330 aircraft from now until the year-end.

Meanwhile, Vietravel Airlines has yet to disclose salaries for pilots and flight attendants to be employed.

The same aggressive recruitment has been taking place at ground service providers such as SAGS and VIAGS.

The number of flights has been on the rise since Vietnam restored all international routes since mid-February with no frequency restrictions, and it will continue increasing as the country will fully reopen international tourism on March 15, a leader of a firm providing aviation services told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

“We have received a lot of requests for reopening international flights to Vietnam from our foreign partners, especially in Europe, Russia and others,” said Bui Minh Dang, deputy head of the Air Transport Department under the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV).

Due to the pandemic that hit the country in early 2020, the Vietnamese government closed borders in March that year, with an exception for Vietnamese repatriates, foreign experts, diplomats, investors, skilled workers, and students, who are allowed to enter the Southeast Asian country if they meet strict quarantine requirements.

After COVID-19 social distancing periods at various levels, the government decided to ease restrictions and reopen the economy in a strategy of living safely with the coronavirus, while speeding up vaccination, since October 1 last year.

The country later launched a pilot drive to resume regular commercial international flights from and to destinations with high COVID-19 safety levels on January 1.  

One month and a half later, the CAAV issued a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) to all air carriers and operators worldwide announcing that Vietnam had lifted all restrictions on international flights so that airlines could restore pre-pandemic operations from February 15.

So far, the Southeast Asian country has documented 3,557,629 COVID-19 cases, with 2,479,883 recoveries and 40,338 fatalities, the Ministry of Health reported.

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