OVERSEAS TOURISM U.S. flight is Vietnam history

It was the first U.S. commercial airline to land in Vietnam in more than 25 years.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam -- The lingering image of American air travel in this city once called Saigon is an army helicopter pulling away from the rooftop of an embattled U.S. Embassy.
However, nearly 30 years after that time, a United Airlines 747-400 was greeted by two dozen white-clad women holding electronic lotus flowers, a battery of smiling officials and businessmen and at least 40 photographers elbowing for a better position to snap a shot of actor David Hasselhoff strolling in on a red carpet.
United's Flight 869, flying out of San Francisco with a stop in Hong Kong, landed at Ho Chi Minh City's Tan Son Nhat Airport at 10:07 p.m. local time Friday, 18 minutes ahead of schedule.
It was the first U.S. commercial carrier to land in Vietnam since a Pan American Airways jetliner flew in, and left, in April 1975, days before the city was overtaken by the North Vietnamese army.
"The Vietnamese people have been waiting for this flight," said Tran Tuan Anh, Vietnam consul general based in San Francisco and son of the country's current president. "We want Americans to come back -- but by American airliners, not American warplanes."
The arrival of the 347-seat United jumbo-jet came after months of negotiations involving the airline and the governments of Vietnam and the United States, and is the latest sign of the ongoing thaw between the two countries.
"The normalization process has been a slow one," said Mark Schwab, Tokyo-based vice president of United's Pacific operations. "It picked up speed about 10 years ago when President Clinton visited the country, but there was this one missing element: No airlines were flying between the two countries."
Increase in visitors
Even before United's launch, people were making the trip. Schwab said 300,000 Americans are expected to travel to Vietnam this year -- up 29 percent from a year ago, an increase inflated by the 2003 slowdown caused by SARS outbreaks. But those tourists will be coming in via Japanese, Korean, Thai and other primarily Asian carriers.
Now, for the first time in more than a generation, Americans will be able to fly directly -- albeit with a stop or two -- to Ho Chi Minh City.
Much of the early business during the Christmas and New Year's season will be expatriate Vietnamese and their offspring, United officials said. Approximately 1.2 million Vietnamese live in the United States, according to Than, with the heaviest concentrations in California and Houston.
"They still have relatives and friends in Vietnam," Than said. "They can visit their homeland, visit their families. Once they come back to Vietnam, they'll want to visit again many times."
General tourism is also up and is expected by travel watchdogs to add 10 percent annually for the next decade, as travelers who have done the standard itineraries are drawn by tales of Vietnam's natural beauty, cultural attractions, beaches and their own basic curiosity about an nation emerging still from war and revolution.
Not everyone is ready to make that journey, however, and that includes significant numbers of Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese living in America. There are scars -- some hidden, some not.
"Obviously," said Martin White, United's senior vice president of marketing in Chicago, "some people may need more time -- or it'll never be the right time."
"But others," he added, "will want to see how things have changed, because that was a long, long time ago."