Vietnam Airlines will officially launch a direct route between Hanoi and Melbourne of Australia on June 15, with two round-trip flights per week on Thursdays and Sundays.

The first flight is scheduled to depart from Hanoi at 0:05am and arrive in Melbourne at 12:30pm on June 15. The plane will return from the second biggest city of Australia at 3pm and land in the capital of Vietnam at 9:35pm the same day.

With the new route opening, Vietnam Airlines is operating the largest number of direct air routes with the highest frequency between Vietnam and Australia – four routes with 18 flights per week connecting Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City with Sydney and Melbourne.

The national flag carrier said all the routes linking with Australia use modern wide-body aircraft Airbus A350-900, and that as a four-star international airline under Skytrax standards, it pledges to optimise passengers’ experience of both ground and air services.

In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, Australia was the 12th biggest aviation market of Vietnam with nearly 900,000 passengers, over 400,000 of whom were served by Vietnam Airlines.

Last year, though some regional and international markets did not fully recover yet, Australia ranked eighth among the sources of international air passengers of Vietnam.

This country is now at the fourth place among the most important markets of Vietnam Airlines, the firm said, noting that it is planning to increase flight frequency and open new routes between the two countries./.