LookAtVietnam – Australia’s Qantas Group has increased its stake in Jetstar Pacific Airlines from 18% to 27% as part of a capital injection plan for the Vietnamese low-cost carrier.

Passengers board a Jetstar Pacific plane. Qantas Group invests in the expanding operation of Jetstar Pacific.

Qantas became a strategic partner of SCIC after the local firm clinched a US$50-million agreement in April 2007 to sell 30% of Vietnam’s second largest airline after the national flag Vietnam Airlines.

Currently, SCIC still holds the controlling stake of 67.46% in Jetstar Pacific. The other stakeholders of Jetstar Pacific are Saigontourist Holding Company with 5.50% and the carrier’s chief executive officer Luong Hoai Nam with 0.04%.

Decree 76 issued by the Government in May 2007 allows for 30% ownership of a Vietnamese airline like Jetstar Pacific by a single foreign investor and 49% by all foreign investors.

Jetstar Pacific on Monday announced that it transported almost one million passengers on its domestic flights in the first six months of this year, up 30% compared with the same period last year.

The passenger figure included some 180,500 passengers for June alone, an increase of up to 43% over the same month in 2008.

Nam of Jetstar Pacific said the airline’s passenger data for the first half of 2009 was a strong result for the airline despite challenges like the global recession and H1N1 influenza that have dealt a blow to the world’s aviation industry.

Nam said Jetstar Pacific was making air travel possible for more Vietnamese by offering low fares. “With a population of 86 million people, yet only six million passengers traveling by air within Vietnam each year, many people have not experienced air travel before.”

Nam said Jetstar Pacific was optimistic about the future of domestic travel within Vietnam as the airline continued to grow.

Jetstar Pacific currently operates 42 domestic flights per day on seven major routes including HCMC-Hanoi, and from these two cities to Danang, Vinh, Hue city, Haiphong and Nha Trang and vice versa.

Jetstar Pacific conducts 11 return flights a day on the high-traffic HCMC-Hanoi route, accounting for around 40% of the total frequencies operated by this airline, Vietnam Airlines and Vietnam’s first operational private carrier Indochina Airlines on this route.

VietNamNet/SGT