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The CEO of Vietjet’s Australian subsidiary Cherrie Aviation has said his airline is not looking for a “race to the bottom” on prices.
Speaking to The Australian Financial Review in his first public interview as head of Cherrie, David May, former general manager of marketing and public relations at Jetstar, said the startup airline is “not here to start a price war” with Qantas Group and Virgin Australia.
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“We’re here to provide options that will ultimately change the dynamics of the market. If you look at the Vietjet product, it’s not the absolute cheapest. It’s not an ultra-low-cost carrier product. It’s not Ryanair,” he said.
According to the AFR report, Cherrie is looking to fly more than 10 737 MAX 8 aircraft of 180 seats each, the first of which appeared on the CASA register last month. The carrier has reportedly hired around 12 pilots and 20 crew.
“We will have a significant number of aircraft by the end of 2027. I don’t necessarily want to share with our competition the scale that we’re bringing, but it will be significant,” said May.
“We’re focused on building high-frequency schedules that allow us to deliver an attractive product on certain routes. And as our fleet grows, we’ll grow our network. But our strategy is to build density.”
The interview comes as Vietjet has found itself in legal hot water over unpaid aircraft leases, with a global asset freeze imposed by a British court earlier this month and its order book handed off to receivers.
May, however, told the AFR that Cherrie does not necessarily need access to Vietjet’s order book, with contingency plans in place to acquire the aircraft elsewhere if needed.
“There are other airlines that are looking to offload their order books right now because of the price of fuel. So that could be purchase, that could be leased, or it could be a range of options,” he said.
“If it was three years ago when this project was first ideated, accessibility to aircraft was very different than it is now. So yes, we are working on the assumption that we have access to that order book, but the competitive advantage we have is not access to aircraft.”
May also said the airline was “vastly majority Australian owned” with no stake from Vietjet’s founder Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, and was raising capital in part from “local funds, investors and institutions” as well as bank loans.
“You need multiple hundreds of millions of dollars, especially if you’re here for the long run, you’re having to plan out your capital requirements over a three- to five-year window,” he told the AFR.
“I’d say $150 million is about the right number for the first two years, but we’re here for the long run, and we’re here because the market needs us to be here.”
No official name or launch date has yet been announced for the airline.
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