Bamboo Airways, Vietnam’s third largest airline, is withdrawing from the long-haul market as part of an ongoing effort to turn itself around financially.
The Vietnamese carrier is giving up its Boeing 787 fleet and discontinuing its long-haul routes to Melbourne (MLB) and Sydney (SYD), in Australia, and London-Gatwick (LGW) and Frankfurt (FRA), in Europe. From November 2023 onwards, the airline will no longer accept bookings for any of these destinations.
Bamboo Airways operated three Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners and had another 10 on order.
Four of Bamboo Airways’ five directors resigned in June 2023, after the airline posted a record 17.619 trillion dong loss (approximately US$ 716 million) for the 2022 fiscal year.
The carrier has been in a fragile financial situation for quite some time, and in September 2023 a number of media reports claimed Bamboo Airlines was having emerged that Bamboo Airways was having difficulty keeping up with salary payments, which resulted in some 30 foreign pilots leaving the company.