Vietjet Opens Hanoi-Tainan Route, Restarts Chiang Mai, With $0 Fares

Vietjet put two routes into the air on 26 October 2026 — a new service between Hanoi and Tainan, in southern Taiwan, and a resumed direct link from Ho Chi Minh City to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. Each route runs four round-trip flights per week.

To mark the expansion, the carrier is selling limited-time Eco fares starting at USD0, excluding taxes and fees. Travellers can book through Vietjet's website or mobile app until 23:00 on 1 November 2026, GMT+7. The promotional fares cover travel from 1 November 2026 through 31 October 2027 — a window spanning nearly a full year.

Why $0 fares make commercial sense

A zero-dollar base fare, before taxes and fees, is a familiar low-cost playbook: it fills seats in a route's first weeks, generates publicity and pushes bookings toward the airline's direct channels instead of intermediaries. The cost of carrying a passenger seated in an otherwise empty seat is marginal; the ancillary revenue and cargo uplift that follow can justify the giveaway. For Vietjet, which has built its brand on cost-effective fares and flexible travel options, the promotion doubles as a market-entry signal on both city pairs.

Neither route is a headline trunk service. Tainan gives Vietjet a secondary Taiwanese gateway alongside the established Vietnam-Taipei flows, while Chiang Mai — a destination Vietjet has served before — restores direct capacity from Ho Chi Minh City that had been suspended. Four weekly round trips on each pair is a conservative startup frequency, consistent with a carrier testing demand before committing more metal.

Where the routes fit in the network

The two additions widen an international network that Vietjet says now reaches the Maldives, Cebu, Clark, Almaty and Prague, among other points across Asia and Europe. That mix — Southeast Asian beach and city destinations, Central Asia, and a Central European long-haul point — sketches the airline's dual strategy: dense short-haul regional growth plus selective long-range expansion using its widebody-capable fleet.

Vietjet frames the new services as expanding travel options and supporting tourism, trade and cultural exchange across Asia. The economic logic is straightforward. Hanoi-Tainan connects two manufacturing and heritage regions with limited direct air links, and Ho Chi Minh City-Chiang Mai ties Vietnam's commercial hub to one of Thailand's largest tourism markets.

What to watch

The promotion's booking deadline — 1 November 2026, less than a week after launch — creates a short, sharp demand spike by design. Whether either route graduates beyond four weekly frequencies will depend on load factors through the northern winter season and into the 2027 summer window that the fare offer covers.

For now, the arithmetic is simple: two routes, eight weekly round trips combined, and a fare offer that runs almost to the end of October 2027. Vietjet has set the pace; the market will set the ceiling.