First US flight touches down in Vietnam after 30 years

A US passenger jet landed in Vietnam yesterday, the first since the Vietnam War ended nearly 30 years ago, United Airlines Flight 869, from San Francisco, arrived in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, at shortly after 10pm (3pm Irish time).

The flight - carrying 347 people, including some Vietnamese who fled their country after the war - was the first US commercial plane to touch down at Tan Son Nhat Airport since the wartime capital of former South Vietnam fell to the communists in 1975. VIPs emerging from the blue and white plane were greeted by Vietnamese women wearing traditional white tunics and holding lotus blossoms and lanterns. US-Vietnam relations have improved considerably in recent years. The two established diplomatic ties in 1995, and in 2001 signed a landmark trade agreement, followed by an aviation pact last year.

United Airlines, which filed for bankruptcy two years ago, is betting the daily flight to Vietnam will be a big moneymaker. Some one million ethnic Vietnamese live in the United States and many visit their homeland every year.

Among the flight’s passengers was 62-year-old Bernard Lang, who said he left on the last military flight out of Saigon when it fell on April 30, 1975.

“I love it. I wanted to be on the first flight because of history,” said Mr Lang, who lives in Falls Church, Virginia. “We should do whatever we can to better relations with Vietnam.”