Vietjet's titanic challenge

Australians are so starved of meaningful competition in their skies they are willing to look past almost anything to believe in the possibility of its arrival.

The launch of Bonza, a doomed-from-the-start airline that lasted just 15 months, was only the most recent example of the collective irrational exuberance that greets any new low-cost player promising to challenge the Qantas Group's stranglehold on the domestic aviation market.[[Let's remember Bonza planned to fly Boeing 737 MAX 8s, which typically seat up to 210 people, to regional routes no other airline could justify. Lo and behold there was not outsized passenger demand for flights between the Sunshine Coast and Mildura.]]

Could Vietjet be next? It's too early to say for sure, but the Hanoi carrier is already stretching credulity to breaking point with its latest venture, Cherrie Aviation, helmed by former Jetstar marketer David May.

Earlier this week, May gave an interview to The Australian Financial Review in which he outlined a bold plan to break up the domestic airline duopoly, including the claims that Cherrie was a "distinct legal entity" from Vietjet and that the two-month-old company is the "most Australian airline in Australia".

"I'm very proud of that," he said. "We're vastly, majority Australian-owned."

It's an interesting claim from an airline whose first aircraft appeared on the Civil Aviation Safety Authority register with Vietjet listed as the owner. But distancing Cherrie from Vietjet and its leader Nguyễn Thị Phương Thảo (aka Madam Thao) is vital if May has any hope of getting any aircraft off the ground in Australia.[[CASA is the safety regulator of Australian skies and oversees everything from pilot regulation to determining which airlines can and can't fly in our airspace.]]

That's because Vietjet is subject to a worldwide freezing order over its assets after losing a long-running court battle with former Macquarie banker Ben Brazil and his distressed debt fund, FitzWalter Capital, in the United Kingdom. And now Alvarez & Marsal has been appointed as receiver over the airline's assets outside Vietnam, including its order book for hundreds of new planes. Thao and Vietjet's other directors face imprisonment, fines and the seizure of their assets if they're found to have breached the UK order.

May, who hails from the UK, is almost as colourful as Vietjet itself. His digital footprint is big enough to paint a picture of a man who contains multitudes. Before he moved to Australia 20 years ago, May says he played one game of professional football for UK's Hull City and also acted in an advertisement with Brian Cox, of Succession fame.[[May speaks about both of these things on wife Kortney Olson's podcast Quadcast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQfKVOHcCCw]]

But he is best known here for running an NRL team, the Gold Coast Titans, for just one year. His stint came to an abrupt end in 2013 when he stepped down, citing "personal issues". May told Rampart on Sunday that the failing health of both his parents was the main reason he went back home.