American airllines re-enter Vietnam

[van]

Did anybody else know that know US flights have been going to Vietnam since the end of the war? I had no idea! Good article, especially the bolded bit

The first commercial flight from the United States to Vietnam since the war nearly 30 years ago has taken off from San Francisco.

The new service to Ho Chi Minh City, run by United Airlines, will fly daily.

The United States normalised diplomatic relations with Vietnam in the 1990s, but flights were not then re-instated.

The last US flight left Vietnam in April of 1975 as communist troops surrounded the city, which was then called Saigon.

Charitable act

At the time, the country director for the American airline Pan-Am was hatching a plot.

He wanted to get the local Pan-Am employees and their immediate relatives out of the country before the communists arrived.

But in order to clear the bureaucratic hurdles, he had to legally adopt them.

And so he became the adoptive father to over 300 Vietnamese civilians, an act of charity that was celebrated in the Hollywood film, Last Flight Out.

On 24 April, a rather overloaded 747 left Saigon's Than Son Nhat airport.

Now things have changed.

Passengers flying in and out of Vietnam on an American plane will no longer be refugees fleeing from war, but tourists, business travellers and some of America's large Vietnamese community.

America and Vietnam only normalised diplomatic relations in the mid-1990s, and ties between the two have been rather slow in coming.

But the resumption of commercial flights is further evidence that the relationship between the two former enemies is now really taking off.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4084195.stm

[westical]

Know, I didn't no that know US flights went to Vietnam.

[corporationsix]

I had know idea!

[van]

Funny lads, funny.

[westical]

I <3 you van

[Karsten]

I changed it as I read that first line 3 times. I'll change it back know that I read the replies.