Yesterday, Vietjet received their first A330 which is from Air Asia (9M-XXB). The new registration is VN-A811.
This aircraft has 12 Business Class in 2-2-2 config and 365 Economy Class in 3-3-3 config.
Vietjet will use this aircraft to fly to Australia, Russia, and some destinations in Europe
VN-A811 landed at Tan Son Nhat Int’l Airport (SGN/VVTS), it was welcomed by water salutes. The meaning of this event is to mark the 10th anniversary of the company’s establishment.
I saw this plane out of the corner of my eye while arriving into Kuala Lumpur after coming back from Penang. By that point, I knew it had already completed a few test flights given that AirAsiaX had placed the plane into long term storage.
Per my knowledge, at that time, the plane was located in the maintenance hangars, I would assume this was due to final checks from the VietJet engineers during their acceptance routines or whatever they may have been up to.
That said, it’s nice to see that the plane now has a new lease in life; AirAsiaX has been struggling massively, and if they weren’t going to other carriers, we might see them returned to lessors or even scrapped earlier than I would have liked.
Dang, only 2 rows of business class? On the routes that it will be flying I’d assume there is more demand for increased business class than there is for 365(!) economy seats, even on a low cost carrier. Heck, Norwegian flew a pretty premium-heavy configuration on their 787s and even increased it a few years into their long haul operations because of the demand for it. Will be interesting to see how this gets used and how its operations fair for sure!
