An American’s Review of VietJet Airways

VietJet Airplane (via TripAdvisor)

Vietnam’s budget airline, VietJet Air, is a great way to travel around Vietnam and other Southeast Asia countries. While travelling in Vietnam & Thailand, we took three flights operated by VietJet Airways.

Having been on all sorts of budget airlines (Spirit, Allegiant, RyanAir, WizzAir, etc…) I’m used to having random delays, absurd baggage fees, and in-flight advertisements being forced on you during the flight. My experience with VietJet Airlines was on par with these other budget airlines.

Prior to even having our flights booked, figuring out how much the flight actually cost was a pain in the ass. You had to pick the flight from the search page, then type in every passengers’ information, and then get to the final page to see how much the final price was. Keep this in mind when budgeting because the price they show is the price before taxes & fees.

VietJet New Route Advert

Now that the tickets were booked, we were able to quickly check in at a kiosk or online. This was a relatively painless process. Once you had your boarding pass, going thru security was a breeze. We just had to be a grey man with our bags when getting onto the flight.

To get onto the aircraft, we had to take a tram from the gate to the aircraft. I’m not sure if this is to save costs or if the airport couldn’t handle an aircraft that large. My initial impression of the airplane was that it was a hand-me-down from a Czech or a Russian aviation company. This could be inferred from the foreign language plastered all around the aircraft. The aircraft was clean & the seats were great for a quick 2-4 hour flight. I found the legroom to be OK as well – not as bad as my knees hitting the back of the seat on RyanAir.

On one of the VietJet Airways flights, I ordered a meal for a friend on the flight while booking the tickets online. However, that meal never showed up (I think it was a rather gross looking Spaghetti – just as a joke).

VietJet Flight Attendants

I cannot comment on the flight attendants since I never interacted with them aside from getting onto and off of the aircraft. However, VietJet made international news when they had a crew of all female flight attendants wearing bikinis. On the upside of that article, it looks like VietJet was privately held by a woman that will be (or already is) the first woman billionaire from Vietnam.

The flights themselves were rather uneventful. We had your typical turbulence and bumpy landings that are synonymous with budget airlines. The pilots on one flight seemed to be a Swiss crew based on their accents during the in-flight announcements.

All in all, VietJet Airways is right on par with other low-cost/budget airlines that you can find around the world. From my initial flight research, it appears that there are some others in SouthEast Asia – Nok Air, Tiger Air, and of course Air Asia. At the end of the day, I would recommend VietJet Airways for anyone looking to save some cash and sacrifice a bit of quality/pampering that comes from mainline carriers.