Asia Watch

A final frontier

Nonstop flights between Vietnam and the US are on the horizon

There aren’t many country pairs around the globe today that don’t have direct non-stop flights connecting them. Flying between Australia and the UK is one of them but that’s about to come to an end this month (March) when Qantas Airways launches its landmark Perth to London Heathrow non-stop service using the new Boeing B787-9 for the 17-hour flight. It might come as a surprise to learn that another example is Vietnam and the United States. Surprising considering the history of the two countries in war and peace and the fact that after the Vietnam War ended in the late 1970s there was a flood of Vietnamese refugees heading over the Pacific. By 1980, according to census figures, there were 261,729 Vietnamese Americans. In the latest census, for 2016, that figure had reached close to 2.1 million. They are the fourth-largest Asian American ethnic group after Chinese Americans, Indian Americans, and Filipino Americans and Vietnamese is the seventh most-spoken language in the U.S. Some 50 per cent of American Vietnamese live in California and Texas.

Yet if they want to visit the country of their roots to see relatives, or their relatives want to come see them, they can’t do it on a non-stop flight. They must fly from the US West Coast to Vietnam through transit points in Asia such as Hong Kong, Taipei, Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai and Beijing, with the total time taken to travel being up to 24 hours. Alternatively, for those living on the US East Coast, they can transit through Europe in countries such as the UK, France and Germany. A direct flight – the flying distance from Ho Chi Minh City (HCM) to Los Angeles is 13,152 kilometers – would take just under 17 hours.