A flight from Singapore with over 100 passengers on board reached Ho Chi Minh City on Wednesday, making it the first to bring international visitors to Vietnam following its full tourism reopening to foreign tourists after two years of closure due to COVID-19.

Flight VN650 of national carrier Vietnam Airlines (VNA) landed at Tan Son Nhat International Airport on Wednesday afternoon, bringing more than 100 passengers, including 20 foreigners.

This flight arrived one day after Vietnam completely reopened international tourism on March 15, following a long hiatus since March 2020 due to the pandemic.

On the same day, VNA also conducted its first flight to send Vietnamese tourists to Singapore under the 'Vaccinated Travel Lane,' a program that allows visitors to enter the city-state without undergoing quarantine.

Such two-way flights indicated the promising recovery of both the aviation and tourism sectors of Vietnam in the coming time, the carrier commented.

VNA will begin to increase the flight frequency from 10 to 21 flights per week from Ho Chi Minh City to Singapore from March 27.

The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) has anticipated some scenarios for aviation recovery in 2022 after the tourism reopening.

According to a neutral scenario, Vietnam is expected to welcome around 43 million air passengers this year, or 50 percent of the figure of 2019, when the pandemic had yet to hit the country, said the CAAV’s air transport department deputy head Bui Minh Dang.

Of these passengers, about eight million will be foreigners, including six million tourists, Dang added.

Globally, the demand for travel in 2022 may increase by 61 percent compared to 2019, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has forecast recently.

On Wednesday, the Vietnamese Ministry of Health announced the renewed health surveillance protocol applicable to international arrivals.

As part of the procedure, visitors with negative COVID-19 tests can enjoy quarantine-free travel from the first day of their arrival in Vietnam, provided they make medical declarations before entry and use Vietnam’s COVID-19 mobile application PC-COVID during their entire stay.

The remaining requirements include proof of negative COVID-19 tests and other instructions when visitors have no such proof or test positive for the virus in Vietnam.

In addition to these rules, Vietnam on Tuesday resumed its unilateral visa exemption for 13 countries as it had been applied before the COVID-19 epidemic hit the country in early 2020.

Citizens of these countries, which are Vietnam’s major tourism markets, including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the UK, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Belarus, Japan, and South Korea, will be allowed to visit Vietnam for up to 15 days without a visa, regardless of their passport type and entry purpose.

Vietnam had closed its borders since March 2020 before resuming multiple international air routes from January on a pilot ‘vaccine passport’ program aimed at reviving the tourist industry.

Since February 15, the country has removed all restrictions on international air passenger transport.

The Southeast Asian nation has reopened the economy in a strategy of safe and flexible adaptation to and effective control of COVID-19 since October 1 last year. 

As of Wednesday, 6,820,458 COVID-19 cases, with 3,547,488 recoveries and 41,607 fatalities, had been documented nationwide, the Ministry of Heath reported.

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