Northwest gets license to begin Vietnam flights
Northwest Airlines has won a license to fly from the USA to Vietnam, according to a report on the Vietnamese government's website.
The license comes into effect in June and allows the carrier to fly between San Francisco and Ho Chi Minh City, with a transit stop in Tokyo, using a Boeing 757 aircraft.
This would make it the second US carrier to fly to Vietnam. In 2004, United Airlines began flights from San Francisco to Ho Chi Minh City via Hong Kong. That made it the first carrier to fly to Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam War, which ended in 1975 with the death of 58,000 Americans and an estimated three million Vietnamese.
Vietnam's national carrier, Vietnam Airlines, has said in the past that it would like to fly to the USA. However, it has delayed these plans several times.
