Bamboo Airways No Longer Sells Scheduled Tickets: What Happened to the Vietnamese Airline

History and positioning

Founded in 2017 by the Vietnamese conglomerate FLC Group under chairman Trịnh Văn Quyết and operating since 2019, Bamboo Airways aimed to become a full-service competitor to Vietnam Airlines and VietJet. Initial growth had been rapid by industry standards: at its peak the airline operated between 30 and 40 aircraft, including Airbus narrowbodies and Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners for long-haul ambitions that included attempts at charter flights to the United States, a scale that most new Asian carriers reach in a decade, not in a few years.

What happened from 2022

Quyết's arrest in 2022 for securities fraud removed FLC's financial backing almost overnight. By July 2025 auditors had identified about 350 million dollars of unpaid debts, while the Vietnamese tax authority separately claimed another 16.8 million dollars and leasing companies began taking back the aircraft one after another: the fleet, from 44 aircraft declared at the peak, shrank to just three, of which only one was actually flying.

The situation in 2025

That single Airbus A321 operated a multi-leg circuit connecting Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang and Macau in a single day on an irregular basis, far from any conventional timetable. From August 1, 2025 the airline withdrew scheduled tickets from sale, with the last scheduled flight on August 22, and the airline's own website began returning "no flights found" on the main domestic routes it once dominated, including the Hanoi-Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi-Da Nang links.

What to know if you have a Bamboo ticket or voucher

With scheduled ticket sales suspended and relaunch plans still not definitively confirmed publicly, anyone with a booking or a pending credit should contact their payment method provider to dispute the charge, rather than wait for a restructuring with no certain timeline. News of a possible commercial relaunch remains, for now, announcements of intent more than confirmed operating plans with dates and tickets on sale.

Bamboo Airways is not today a carrier to plan a trip around, having stopped selling scheduled tickets in August 2025 after years of financial deterioration following the arrest of its founder in 2022. Anyone organizing a domestic or international flight in Vietnam should turn to Vietnam Airlines or VietJet, and treat any relaunch announcement as unconfirmed until tickets actually go back on sale.