Bikini Flight Attendants To Ditch Sexy Uniforms On Vietnamese Airline

Vietnamese carrier VietJet became famous for their flight attendants wearing sexy bikinis during their travels, but the employees won’t don the salacious outfits when they fly to Indonesia. The flight attendants will be fully clothed when they fly from Ho Chi Minh City to Jakarta in December, the Jakarta Post reported Wednesday.

There was controversy around the airline in 2012 when they held a salacious contest in the middle of the flight. They were fined 20 million Dong, which translates to about $880, because of the public relations stunt, News.com.au wrote. They were not given permission by the Vietnam’s aviation authorities first.

When Ibnu Hadi, the ambassador of Indonesia, caught wind that VietJet was flying to Jakarta, he made sure the flight attendants would be covered up.

“I’d like to explain that the bikini (stunt) was only for one event. It was for the airline’s launch of their new route to Nha Trang, which is a resort city so that’s why they wore bikinis,” he said, according to a statement quoted by Indonesian broadcast program Liputan 6. “(The airline) has been reprimanded by their (the Vietnamese) government for their stunt.” He added: “VietJet is a budget airline and they will open a route to Indonesia without the bikinis. The opening of the route is still being discussed. Hopefully before the close of this year.”

The flight attendants only wear bikinis for special occasions, according to VietJet’s deputy director for commercial affairs Jay L Lingeswara. “We strongly believe and are committed to offering the best and suitable services to the Indonesian market,” he said, according to the Jakarta Post.

Bikinis or not, VietJet is raking in the dough. Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, the CEO of VietJet, became Vietnam’s first female billionaire. “I’ve never sat down and calculated my assets,” Thao said in a March 2016 interview with Bloomberg.com. “I’m just focused on how to boost the company’s growth, how to increase the average salary for my employees, how to lead the airline to gain more market share and make it number one.”

Their success can be attributed to their PR stunts and scandalous outfits. “They've been clever about their marketing,” aviation analyst Greg Waldron of FlightGlobal told the BBC in February. “This gave them huge publicity all over the world.”

In the future, VietJet could go international. “There's no doubt that they are the dominant low-cost carrier in Vietnam,” he said. “The question is whether they can really expand that model overseas.”

But they would have to focus on their strategy. “These business models are not like McDonald's, where you can just replicate the model elsewhere,” he said. “With airlines, it's a lot more challenging: if they go internationally, this would add a huge amount of complexity to their business model. Long-haul flights would again be a completely different game.”

Currently, VietJet flies to 35 countries. Having their flight attendants wear modest attire could potentially be their first step in going international.

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