For once an airline may have wished it was not on-time.
Asiana Airlines flight 729 departed the gate at Seoul Incheon international airport on schedule at 10:10am on February 29, and a few minutes later took off for the 4.5 hour journey to Hanoi. But at 10:30am, Vietnamese authorities notified Asiana that Korean carriers could no longer land at Hanoi. Will Horton reports on Forbes.
Vietnam gave the option to instead divert to Van Don international airport at Quảng Ninh Province, 140km away from Hanoi, the Korean embassy in Vietnam said. Asiana, which does not normally fly to Van Don, decided to cancel the flight and have it return to Seoul. Flight OZ729 landed back at Incheon about two hours after it took off. The flight reached a maximum altitude of 38,000 feet, according to Flightradar24, and it was nearing Shanghai around the time it turned around.
“We believe it is connected with the spread of the new coronavirus,” an Asiana spokesperson told Yonhap. Korea has the most confirmed cases outside of China. Vietnam this past Tuesday banned the entry of Koreans who had been in the city of Daegu and nearby county of Cheongdo, where the coronavirus outbreak is concentrated.
This was not a total ban on Korean visitors, but travel demand is already significantly weakened, evidenced by the Asiana flight having 40 passengers onboard the A330-300, which seats between 275-298.
While the Asiana flight returned to Seoul, Vietnam Airlines and VietJet had their Seoul-Hanoi flights land in Hanoi as planned. Most other Korea-Vietnam flights are cancelled, especially those from Korea’s low-cost carriers. Korean visitors to Vietnam have rapidly grown, lured by inexpensive resorts closer to Vietnam than traditional getaways further in Southeast Asia, like Thailand and Indonesia.
Korean visitors to Vietnam grew by 23% to 3.1 million in the first nine months of 2019, the latest figures available. Vietnam’s central coastal city of Da Nang is especially popular with Koreans. Before the coronavirus, there were upwards of 20 daily flights between Korea and Da Nang. Vietnam was an important market for Korea’s numerous LCCs, and reflects another key destination seeing a sharp drop in demand. Korea’s LCCs were impacted by last year’s travel downturn to Japan and this year’s coronavirus impacting inbound demand from China.