Hardships cover low-cost air firm

Jetstar Pacific (JP), Vietnam’s low-cost carrier, was only allowed to fly with “hired logo” of Jetstar and Jet till the end of this October 2010.

In this time, JP has to amend the business license periodically and use new trade name with the commitment of not causing any mistake with the logo of Australia’s Jetstar Airways.

An official from JP said, from the last year end, his firm had a big headache as building a new trade name. Clearly, with the strong trade name bought from Jetstar Airways, JP has operated comfortably in Vietnam’s domestic market and expanded its market share on regional airline routes.

Private carrier VietJet Air (VJA) also had to face difficulties in using trade name. When selling 30 percent stake to Malaysia’s AirAsia, both partners aimed to use VietJet AirAsia trade mark and co-sell air tickets via www.airasia.com.

But as explaining such an air ticket sale system and trade name usage, the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) said “deny” because the co-selling of air tickets in the domestic market will create conditions for foreign partner to control revenue so the local partner will lose the effective control right.

VJA also is busy facing the dispute of trade name VietAir against the national firm Vietnam Airlines. Factually, Vietnam Airlines has used VietAir trade name since 1992 on an international flight route without registering the monopoly protection. In 1007, VJA submitted to register protection for the brand name VietAir to Vietnam Intellectual Property Bureau and then Vietnam Airlines voiced “reject”.

Due to the dispute, the owner of VietAir brand name now has not been defined. vice head of CAAV Lai Xuan Thanh said, the agency still recognised the VietAir trade name using right of Vietnam Airlines. In this case, granting this monopoly trade name to VJA according to Vietnam Intellectual Property Bureau’s regulations does not mean that VJA can have the right to use this name on their all commercial flights.

Meanwhile, since the start of this year, CAAV for times has requested the composer Ha Dung’s Indochina Airlines to report about its financial situation but till now the firm has no reply.
Cannot “keep silent” anymore when the deadline of re-operation license is coming in May, Indochina Airlines (ICA) was forced to send a fax saying that it wanted to re-start flights by end Q4 of 2010. But, the company did not report on details of debts, financial situation, human resources and aircrafts to CAAV.

Vo Huy Cuong, director of CAAV’s Air Transport Department, confirmed it will continue facilitating the take-off plans of air carriers. But if ICA cannot pay debts or reach agreement on debt blocking with banks, CAAV will likely revoke the business license of ICA.

Nguoilaodong

Tags: Vietnam aviation, Vietnam aviation market