Vietnamese low-cost carrier Vietjet inaugurated its first regular flight from Hanoi to Prague on the evening of 10 October 2026, giving Václav Havel Airport its long-sought nonstop link to Vietnam and its first scheduled service to Kazakhstan in a decade. Flight VJ31—a 377-seat Airbus A330-300—took off from Noi Bai at 13:25 local time, landed in Almaty for a 90-minute technical stop, and touched down in Prague 15½ hours after departure. The return sector departs the Czech capital at 20:55 and is timed at 14 hours 25 minutes. The route will run twice weekly (Tuesdays and Saturdays), and Vietjet has secured “fifth-freedom” traffic rights on the Almaty–Prague segment, enabling ticket sales between the Czech Republic and Kazakhstan. For Prague Airport, the launch fills a major network gap: Vietnam generated more than 75 000 round-trip passengers for the Czech market last year, yet travellers relied on connecting options via Doha, Dubai or Frankfurt. The new flight is expected to stimulate both inbound tourism and the sizeable Vietnamese diaspora in Czechia—one of the country’s largest non-EU communities—and to provide exporters with quicker belly-hold cargo capacity to Southeast Asia. Airport management had pursued a Vietnam link since at least 2019, when Bamboo Airways briefly filed (but never started) nonstop Hanoi–Prague flights that were shelved by the pandemic. Corporate mobility managers will welcome another long-haul low-cost option out of Central Europe, but should note several operational particulars. Passengers must deplane in Almaty for security screening, meaning eligibility for Kazakhstan visas or transit-without-visa rules may come into play for certain nationalities. Vietjet’s narrow seat pitch (29 inches in economy) and buy-on-board model could necessitate upgraded travel policies for long-haul assignments; only 12 business-class recliners are offered. Companies with staff rotations between Czechia, Kazakhstan and Vietnam can, however, benefit from triangular fares and simplified cargo documentation under fifth-freedom rights. The service also re-establishes scheduled Prague–Almaty connectivity abandoned by Czech Airlines in 2016, opening a one-stop gateway to China’s western provinces and Central Asia’s growing renewables and mining sectors. Prague Airport will monitor performance through the winter season; if load factors exceed 80 %, management hinted that additional frequencies or a switch to true nonstop Hanoi–Prague flights could follow next summer, pending bilateral slot coordination and Vietjet’s wide-body fleet growth. Travel buyers should therefore track the route’s yield curve closely, as introductory promotional fares (from €499 round trip) are likely to rise once demand stabilises.
Source: Zdopravy.cz
