Vietnam Airlines from Australia | Two Hubs, One Country, Honest Advice
Vietnam Airlines has a structural advantage most carriers do not: its country has two international gateways at opposite ends, and the trip that uses both is a better trip. That is the single most useful thing about this airline and almost nobody books it that way.
The airline whose country is the right shape
Most airline pages are about seats and lounges. This one is mostly about a map, because the map is the argument.
Vietnam is long and thin, and it has international airports at both ends. Hanoi in the north, Ho Chi Minh City in the south, roughly seventeen hundred kilometres apart, and Vietnam Airlines flies non-stop to both from Australia.
Which means the correct Vietnam itinerary is not a return. It is an open jaw: fly into one end, travel down or up the country, and fly home from the other end. You never backtrack, and the whole trip is one continuous line rather than a loop with a wasted day in it.
Almost nobody books it this way, because a flight search asks you where you are going and where you are coming back to, and the answer "different places" is not what the box wants. It is a five-minute job for a consultant. Ask us to build a Vietnam open jaw.
The two ends are different countries
This is why the open jaw is not just a logistics trick.
Our Hanoi guide describes a thousand-year-old city with medieval trade streets, a genuine winter, and a pace that does everything slowly. Our Ho Chi Minh City guide describes a fast, hot, commercial metropolis that is not nostalgic about anything.
They are not variations on a theme. They are the two poles of a country that spent a long time being two countries, and a trip that sees only one of them has seen half of Vietnam.
Between them sits the part most itineraries skip: Hoi An, Hue, Da Nang, the coast, the caves at Phong Nha, and a train line that runs the length of it. Whether you cover the middle by land, by train or by a short domestic hop is a matter of time and taste. What you should not do is fly to Hanoi, fly back to Hanoi, and fly home from Hanoi.
The airline itself, honestly
Australians expect less than they get, which is a pleasant way round.
Vietnam Airlines is a proper full-service carrier with a modern fleet, a Skytrax four-star rating, and a business class that is a genuine flat bed rather than an angled seat. The service is polite and slightly formal rather than warm in the way Thai Airways is warm. The food is decent. The entertainment is fine.
It is not Singapore Airlines and it does not charge like Singapore Airlines. What it is, reliably, is a proper airline flying a modern aircraft to a country at a fare that is usually well below the regional big names.
The business class deserves a specific mention. At eight to nine hours from the east coast, this route sits in the same awkward middle as Bangkok, and our is business class worth it guide is candid about where that line falls. But the fare gap here is smaller than at the marquee carriers, which moves the calculation. For travellers who want the front cabin and cannot justify what Singapore or Cathay want for it, this is one of the better value flat beds in Asia.
SkyTeam, which is the honest drawback
Vietnam Airlines is in SkyTeam.
Qantas is in Oneworld. Singapore Airlines, Air India and Thai are in Star Alliance. SkyTeam is the alliance most Australians have no relationship with.
So the plain version: your Qantas status does nothing here. No lounge, no priority, no status credits. If you have spent years building a balance and you like it working, that is a real cost and it is a reason our Cathay Pacific and Malaysia Airlines pages point out their Oneworld membership so prominently.
If your points live somewhere else, or nowhere, this is completely irrelevant and you can ignore the paragraph above.
We would rather tell you this before you book than have you find out at a lounge door. Tell us your programme when you request a quote and we will factor it in properly, including telling you when a slightly dearer alliance carrier is actually the better buy once the status is counted.
The visa is the thing that ruins trips
This is not really about the airline, and it is the most important paragraph on the page.
Australians generally need a visa for Vietnam, arranged before you fly. The e-visa applied for online is the usual route. Vietnam does not do visa-on-arrival for us the way much of South East Asia does.
This catches people out constantly, precisely because the rest of the region is so easy. Bali waves you through. Thailand waves you through. Malaysia waves you through. Vietnam does not, and an airline will refuse boarding at check-in in Sydney, at which point the holiday is over before it started.
Apply well in advance. Match the details on the application to the passport exactly, because they are checked against each other. Check the current rules on an official source rather than a blog, including this one. And if your household holds passports from more than one country, check every single one of them, because the requirements differ.
Our flights to Vietnam page covers the corridor and repeats this warning, because it is worth repeating.
The seasons, which differ by end
One more reason the two hubs matter.
The north has a real winter. Hanoi from roughly December to February can be genuinely cold, damp and grey, and Australians arrive in shorts because South East Asia is filed as one climate in our heads. It is not.
The south is warm all year. Ho Chi Minh City has a dry season roughly December to March and a wet season where the rain arrives as an afternoon burst rather than a grey day.
Which means a Vietnam trip in February can be a cold city and a hot one in the same fortnight, and the packing needs to know that. October and November, then March and April, are the windows where both ends behave.
An open jaw lets you pick which end you start at, which lets you point the trip at the weather. That is a genuine planning tool and it exists only because the country has two doors.
When we recommend it, and when we do not
We recommend it when Vietnam is the destination, when you want the open jaw, when the flat bed matters and the budget does not stretch to the marquee carriers, and when your points do not live in Oneworld or Star Alliance.
We do not recommend it when you are connecting onward to India or Europe, because Vietnam is a destination hub rather than a connecting one and there are better routings. And we do not recommend it when your Qantas status is doing serious work for you, because SkyTeam will not honour it.
That is the honest picture. Send us your dates, tell us the shape of the trip rather than the flights you think you need, and we will price the open jaw against the return so the difference is a number rather than a theory. Our what is a wholesale airfare guide explains where the numbers come from. Get a free Vietnam Airlines quote.