The Bikini Airline: Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao
The Bikini Airline: Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao
From a Hanoi childhood to Moscow’s markets, Sovico and Vietjet — the full story behind the 56-second film.
Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao was born in Hanoi in 1970. At seventeen she left Vietnam to study in Moscow, arriving in a country that would soon cease to exist. The Soviet Union she encountered was already creaking: shortages were ordinary, queues were a way of life, and the state trading system was beginning to fail.
That collapse became her opening. While the planned economy ran short of consumer goods, Thao began sourcing electronics, rubber and watches and selling them into the gaps. She has said the business made her a millionaire by 21. The exact figures are disputed and hard to audit, but the pattern is clear: she learned to move goods across borders at a moment when borders were changing faster than the rules.
Sovico
In 1992 she founded Sovico Holdings in Ho Chi Minh City. The company began in trading and distribution and grew into a diversified group with interests in real estate, finance and aviation. Sovico’s headquarters — and the skyline that has grown around it — are part of the story of Vietnam’s post-Đổi Mới business class.
Thao’s husband, Nguyen Thanh Hung, has been a co-founder and long-time executive in the group. Sovico’s expansion ran alongside Vietnam’s own: a socialist market economy opening to foreign investment, a young population moving to cities, and a domestic aviation market that was about to take off.
Vietjet
In November 2007 Thao founded Vietjet. It was not the first airline to fly in Vietnam, but it was the first private airline to be established in the country — a distinction the film is careful to make. The first revenue flight followed on 25 December 2011, from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi.
The early years were not glamorous. Vietjet started with a handful of aircraft, a new brand and a market dominated by the state-owned Vietnam Airlines. It competed on price and on the novelty of a private carrier. Then came the campaign that gave it a nickname the world would remember.
In 2012 Vietjet put cabin crew in bikinis on a flight to the beach city of Nha Trang. The images went everywhere. Critics called it exploitative; the company called it a marketing experiment; the flying public paid attention. The “Bikini Airlines” nickname stuck. Vietjet was fined for the stunt, but the attention was worth more than the fine: it turned a small domestic carrier into a name people knew.
Vietjet was listed on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange in 2017. Thao became one of Vietnam’s richest people; Forbes has repeatedly placed her among the country’s wealthiest women. Sovico’s aviation and finance interests expanded, and Vietjet grew into one of Southeast Asia’s larger low-cost carriers.
The story behind the film
This article accompanies a 56-second vertical documentary short. It is the full story the film compresses: the Hanoi childhood, the Moscow years, the first million, Sovico, Vietjet, the bikini campaign and the market shift that followed.
The film uses archival photography, licensed stock footage, designed newspaper props and kinetic typography. No portrait of Thao is fabricated. The newspaper front pages are clearly labelled illustrative reconstructions. Market-share graphics are qualitative illustrations, not audited data.
Sources and further reading
Image credits, licence links and fact-check notes: https://tinyurl.com/bikini-airline
Written for the documentary short. Subscribe for updates.
- Reference: https://tinyurl.com/bikini-airline
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