I've written about Bamboo Airways, which is the fairly new and extremely ambitious Vietnamese airline that I simply can't make sense of. Bamboo Airways was founded in 2017, and already has 50 Airbus A321neos and 30 Boeing 787-9s on order. The Vietnamese airline is privately owned and took delivery of their first Boeing 787-9 in…
Continue reading: Bamboo Airways To Order Boeing 777X?!?
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Ben- do you reckon that this is just going to turn into another Baltia, albeit one with BRAND NEW planes, rather than a - now 32 year old - 747-200?
Are the 777Xs definitely in addition to the 789s?
At the moment the order is speculation in any event and equally it is speculation that they want to fly to the US with them. The market to Europe is far more vibrant and maybe they are out to see Vietnam Airlines off the patch.
You can drop the "kind of" from "This is kind of nuts...".
Will absolutely cease to exist within 2-3 years, question is whether they actually believe this strategy is not nuts, or it's a deliberately nuts strategy with the objective of hurting VN enough that VN will have to look at acquiring them in a couple of years.
I had the opportunity to fly Bamboo last year and the service they offered for a discount airline puts every North American airline I have flow on (and it is substantial) to shame.
If you want to fly them (and I assume you do), I would think you'll need to do it soon before they go bankrupt... You should probably book a HAN-PRG flight for this summer 🙂
I worry that Bamboo is trying to run before it can walk. There is potential for US flights as well as 777x flights but that can only happen if Bamboo can convince people to see Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City as a connecting hub. Like Hong Kong, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore are in that region. Maybe then they could make 777x flights work but if they can't they're effectively throwing money down the drain. I'm wondering what their business plan is because I'm struggling to see it.
I would be thinking they are no different from the new WOW airlines if they haven't already started service. Now I'm confused.
I sometimes wonder how vain can some individuals be in the airline industry.
There seems to be no debate (with the exception of the Bamboo executives of course) that non-stop routes from Vietnam are financially unviable let alone with a mammoth 777x.
The question that baffles me is that who signed this off?
They are seriously expanding too fast, just like Norwegian. 30 787s for a new startup airline is already ambitous enough. Where the heck are they going to fly all these planes? And now they want to order even more planes (777x) to launch flights to the United States? Is there really that much excess demand for them to be ordering so many planes and deploying them on the most insane of routes? I really would love to see what sort of position they would be in 2 or 3 years from now.
The company is short on cash flow so they calling for more investors by order a dozen Boeing 777 then everything vanish! Tada!
Bamboo is a very real airline that shouldn't be confused with Baltia. It also has a real customer base with 1.5 million or so vietnamese residents in the US, most of whom live near LAX and have friends, family, and business ties with SGN and wealthy enough to travel frequently. Of course, yields may or may not be great, but people will pay a premium for a nonstop, and Bamboo will have lower labour costs than almost any of its competitors.