HÀ NỘI — Việt Nam’s aviation industry reported a sharp decline in punctuality rate in the first half of this year despite a significant increase in passenger traffic, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of Việt Nam (CAAV).

CAAV’s statistics showed that on-time performance rate fell to 62.6 per cent in the period, down 13.1 percentage points from a year earlier.

Bamboo Airways had the best on-time performance (OTP) rate of 81 per cent, followed by Pacific Airlines (80.2 per cent),  VASCO (78 per cent), Vietnam Airlines (71 per cent), Vietravel Airlines (67.7 per cent) and Vietjet Air (50.6 per cent).

Flight cancellations also increased to 855 flights in the first half of this year, accounting for 0.6 per cent of the total operations and 0.2 percentage points higher than the same period last year.

In June alone, overall OTP dropped to just 56 per cent, nearly 10 percentage points lower than the previous month. Of out 24,304 flights during the month, 44 per cent were delayed and 1.2 per cent were cancelled.

The CAAV attributed 68.5 per cent of delays to late aircraft arrivals. Other reasons included airline problems, operational reasons, commercial, weather and technical factors.

The total number of passengers through Việt Nam’s airports reached 59.7 million in January – June, up 9.1 per cent year-on-year. International traffic soared by 12.9 per cent to 22.9 million while domestic passengers rose 6.9 per cent to 36.8 million. — VNS