Becoming Leading Digital Airline in the Region

With the business motto of “Complete dedication - Active innovation - Sustainable development", Vietnam Airlines Corporation continues to affirm its position as a national flag airline of Vietnam in the market and aims to become a leading digital airline in the region. Our reporter has an interview with Mr. Dang Ngoc Hoa, President of the Board of Directors of Vietnam Airlines.

Could you please introduce the outstanding results of Vietnam Airlines and its goals and tasks in the coming time?

In the past year, the aviation industry faced prolonged COVID-19 impacts, including the Zero-COVID policy in China and the slow reopening of Japanese and South Korean markets. To date, the pandemic has been well controlled but it has left enormous consequences on the aviation industry. Besides COVID-19, in 2022, new difficulties such as geopolitical conflicts, a sharp increase in fuel prices, volatile exchange rates and high inflation greatly reduced the recovery momentum of airlines including Vietnam Airlines

Facing the above challenges, Vietnam Airlines successfully applied its own solutions, combined with external support to get through the most difficult period.

Knowing that restructuring is critical, Vietnam Airlines has drastically restructured and reformed its business operations since the beginning. We further streamlined the apparatus and personnel, rearranged the division of labor and improved resource quality. Therefore, Vietnam Airlines reduced four corporation-level entities and 50 department-level entities. At the same time, by actively adopting efficiency solutions, negotiating discounts with partners and recommending authorities to extend policy enforcement to support the aviation industry, Vietnam Airlines cut its total cost by nearly VND7,500 billion in 2022.

Regarding flight operations, by the end of the first quarter of 2023, Vietnam Airlines’ flight network had recovered almost completely, with more than 90 routes to nearly 25 domestic destinations and nearly 30 international destinations in 17 countries and territories. In 2022, the airline carried 18.31 million passengers, or 107.8% of the plan, and 212,000 tons of freight, or 100% of the plan. Its consolidated revenue reached VND72,359 billion (US$3.15 billion), or 121% of the plan, of which the parent corporation contributed VND50,617 billion, exceeding the plan by 12%.

Vietnam Airlines continued to affirm the brand of Vietnam's national airline in domestic and foreign markets when it provided, with absolute safety, all VIP flights for Party, State and National Assembly officials. Its safety index and punctuality index were also always high.

While many major airlines in the world such as Thai Airways, Philippine Airlines, Virgin Australia, Avianca and Norwegian Air went bankrupt or filed for bankruptcy protection, the recovery of Vietnam Airlines is stunning, making an important contribution to the revival and development of the country's aviation, tourism, economy and society at the back of the pandemic. This achievement has proven the correct policy of the Party, the Government and the National Assembly and the effective effort of Vietnam Airlines itself throughout the past tough time.

In 2023, with the working principle of “Complete devotion - Active innovation - Sustainable development", Vietnam Airlines will focus on key solutions: Ensuring absolute safety, restoring and improving service quality by minimizing cost and waste; enhancing business performance and efficient use of aircraft, pilots and flight attendants; and increasing workforce productivity. At the same time, we will continue our service improvement programs, upgrade service standards toward the 5-star class and advance digital transformation to become a leading digital airline in the region.

Would you share about Vietnam Airlines’ digital transformation? How will this plan proceed in the future?

Over the past time, we have considered digital transformation a particularly important task.

Vietnam Airlines is proud to be one of the first companies to start international integration, right from the time it opened flights to and from countries around the world. We have organized a commercial system since 1993, coordinated with corporations, airlines and international organizations and connected global electronic booking and reservation systems with many airlines in the world.

During the development process, Vietnam Airlines has always actively applied new systems and technologies to flight operation and business performance. We have put into use the Salesforce B2B/B2C customer management system; upgraded the AMOS MRO-IT aircraft maintenance management system; upgraded the commercial reporting, sales management and data synchronization system; developed and upgraded websites and mobile applications for better customer experiences; and expanded the network of domestic and foreign airports to adopt online check-in.

Vietnam Airlines has cooperated with major domestic and foreign partners such as Ernst & Young, KPMG, Google, FPT and Viettel to determine the current status of our digital transformation; defined our vision and goals to build Vietnam Airlines Digital Transformation Strategy for the 2022-2026 period, with specific solutions and action roadmaps. On December 30, 2022, Vietnam Airlines issued VNA's Digital Transformation Strategy for the 2022-2026 period.

Vietnam Airlines’ comprehensive digital transformation focuses on developing and utilizing values from the digital product and service ecosystem operated on digital platforms and data. Vietnam Airlines has been building important digital platforms such as the customer data platform (CDP), Omnichannel platform; enterprise application integration platform; big data collection, processing and analysis platform; VNA E2E partner management platform.

To realize the goal of becoming a digital airline by 2026, Vietnam Airlines has not only invested in developing digital platforms and digital applications, but also paid attention to developing digital culture and creating an innovative environment for all employees to utilize all advantages of digital technology.

On October 10, 2022, in response to National Digital Transformation Day, Vietnam Airlines launched the “Digital Culture of Vietnam Airlines.” This is an important foundation for Vietnam Airlines to develop digital initiatives to enhance customer experiences, improve work performance, optimize costs and create new values.

As a member of VCCI’s Executive Committee (7th term), what do you think about the role and contributions of VCCI to the development of the business community ?

As a representative of the Vietnamese business community and entrepreneurs, VCCI has taken part in building institutions, policies and laws, fostering administrative reform, improving the investment and business environment and strengthening international economic integration.

VCCI has supported Vietnam Airlines as well as many other businesses in the country in moving toward sustainable development in accordance with Party and State guidelines, policies and laws, thus contributing to the nation's development.

On the occasion of publishing the book “VCCI - 60-year journey for businesses and the nation”, what recommendations would you like to make?

In the past years, the Vietnamese business community and entrepreneur force have continuously grown in both quantity and quality. To further develop the business community and entrepreneur force, each entrepreneur needs to take ethics as the core and focus on building a business culture, and implement Party and State policies on building entrepreneurs with national spirit, business culture and high social responsibility.

At the same time, companies need to actively innovate business models, align business with the green economy, digital economy, and circular economy, as well as apply science and technology and develop human resources.

Thank you very much!

Source: Vietnam Business Forum