Sharon Petersen
Cabin: Economy Class
Route: Multiple one hour domestic routes
Aircraft: A321
Vietnam Airlines is the flag carrier of Vietnam and the country’s full service airline. Competition from low cost carriers has forced Vietnam Airlines to drop some of the luxuries of years ago such as snacks on short haul flights. Once you add baggage to a low cost airline ticket, Vietnam Airlines often comes out the same or even cheaper and has a lot more routes and times to offer its passengers.
Seat and Amenities
The seats on Vietnam Airlines are very comfortable and the leg room generous especially for aircraft that are used on short one – two hour routes. In fact the seats on the Vietnam Airlines A321 are among the widest in the sky at over 20 inch. Seats recline between 5 and 6 inches and blankets are available on evening flights. The cabin of the A321 feels extremely roomy unlike most single aisle aircraft.
Customer service on board
Being that the flights are so short it is difficult to judge this however all the cabin crew were attentive and kind and readily available should anyone need any assistance.
Catering
A bottle of water is provided complimentary on all short flights. Snacks are only offered on flights over 90 minutes and meals on flights over two hours.
Inflight entertainment
Over head screens every 5 rows show the route map and flight statistics such as altitude, time to destination etc. There was no other in flight entertainment.
Extra information
We traveled on Vietnam Airlines three times whilst we were away and not once (boarding or disembarking) did we use an air-bridge, it was always the stairs and a bus ride which gets a little tedious and can be time consuming. With this in mind, ensure you allow enough time between connecting flights. Every flight we had departed on time and arrived ahead of schedule.
