Turbulence for Jetstar in Vietnam
HANOI – Jetstar Pacific’s successful operations in Vietnam appear to be causing friction in political cicrles.
According to reports, Vietnamese authorities are inspecting the budget carrier after two foreign engineers fired by the company accused it of violating safety protocols.
Government officials say Jetstar Pacific’s former chief engineer and one of his colleagues sent a letter on October 26 to the Vietnam Aviation Agency detailing several violations of safety rules.
Online newspaper VnExpress quoted a senior Jetstar Pacific executive as saying the two foreign engineers had been fired for performance-related reasons.
JPA is the only private airline in Vietnam. This week it appointed Le Song Lai, the deputy general director of the State Capital Investment Corporation (SCIC), as the new general director Jetstar Pacific Airlines.
SCIC holds more than 70 percent of the shares of Jetstar Pacific, with the remainder held by Qantas.
The Vietnam Transport Ministry recently requested JPA not to use the orange star logo and branding common to all Jetstar operations.
Ben Sandilands, writing his Plane Talking blog, said the $US50 million Qantas investment in Jetstar Pacific has flown into an ideological chasm in the ranks of the Communist Party and government in Vietnam and it isn’t clear how it can escape.
“On one side pragmatic party members, believed to include the Prime Minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, have embraced the global branding of trans-border franchises as contributing to the expansion of the Vietnam economy.
“On the other, ideologues in the party are waging a glorious struggle against the oppression of the people and their cultural identity from the subversive forces of global capitalism, or words to that effect,†Sandilands wrote.
The dispute went public after the Minister of Transport, Ho Nghia Dung, issued a statement saying that following a complaint he had “decided that the use of the Jetstar name and logo may make people mistake the Vietnamese carrier for Australian carrier Jetstarâ€.
This led to Jetstar CEO Bruce Buchanan visiting Hanoi last week and releasing a statement pointing out that the branding of the airline and its integration with the wider Jetstar and Qantas network through their international connections is defined by binding agreements.
Ian Jarrett
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