The first international flights will to Japan and the Republic of Korea with the frequency of four trips per week for each route, CAAV Director General Dinh Viet Thang told the Viet Nam News Agency on Monday.

Thang said Viet Nam has completed consultation about the flight resumption with the Japanese and Korean sides.

The Ministry of Transport will convene a meeting on September 1 with the participation of representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of National Defense, Ministry of Health, and Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs to discuss the plan in detail, especially quarantine work.

Viet Nam halted all international commercial flights since April 1 in a bid to prevent importation of COVID-19. It is estimated that Vietnamese airlines will suffer a loss of US$4 billion this year.

The CAAV said five domestic airlines, namely Viet Nam Airlines, Vietjet, Bamboo Airways, Pacific Airways, and VASCO, only operated 16,400 flights between July 19 and August 18, down 45% from the same period last year.

In a bid to support the domestic carriers, the Viet Nam Aviation Business Association has called on the Government to offer the airlines credit worth over US$1 billion at preferential interest rates for three- to four-year terms.

In recent meeting on COVID-19 response, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc reaffirmed the Government’s resolve to pursue the dual goal of containing COVID-19 and restarting the economy heavily impacted by the pandemic.

Official data released by the General Statistics Office last weekend showed that inbound tourism shrank 66.6% whil trade with the rest of the world contracted 0.3% on year in January-August./.