News

On 31 March, an aircraft of Vietnam’s Bamboo Airways landed at Kaunas airport with 111 citizens returning to Lithuania from Vietnam and Thailand thanks to the efforts of Lithuania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Embassy of Lithuania in China, and the Honorary Consul of Lithuania in Vietnam Nguyen The Kien.

“We are grateful to Lithuania’s Honorary Consul in Vietnam and to the staff of the Embassy of Lithuania in Beijing for their hard work and all the effort to organize this flight. The Embassy has only a few employees, but during these weeks, they personally contacted as many as several hundred Lithuanian citizens, who could not return to Lithuania. We would also like to thank the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Thailand and Vietnam, and the Delegation of the European Union in Hanoi, for helping to obtain the necessary permits to open the already closed Vietnamese and Thai airports, as well as clearances to fly through the airspace of thirteen countries," said the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Linas Linkevičius.

The plane carried 209 passengers. Along Lithuanian citizens, there were nationals of Latvia, Estonia, Germany, Denmark, Poland, Brazil, Vietnam, and Ecuador, who have a residence permit in Germany, and used the possibility to return to Europe. Most foreigners will now be carried by another flight from Kaunas to Berlin.

Lithuania applied to the EU for reimbursement of the costs of the flight operated by Saigon Star Travel, in order to access a financing mechanism for the organisation of repatriation flights from third countries to the European Union.