VietJet Registers First Aircraft For Its Australian Startup

It seems the bikini airline is getting serious about Australia. Three months after reports first indicated VietJet's plans to set up an Australian airline, a brand-new Boeing 737 MAX 8 owned by the Vietnamese budget carrier has appeared on Australia's aircraft register. Its listed operator is a Melbourne company that was only set up in August.

The aircraft in question, registered VH-T8A, appeared on Australia's Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) aircraft register on 23 September 2026. CASA records list Vietjet Aviation, the Ho Chi Minh City-based parent of the VietJet group, as the registration holder. The registered operator is Cherrie Aviation, with an address on Bourke Street in the Melbourne CBD.

VietJet has confirmed it has "agreed to lease the registered aircraft to an Australian entity", which is now "seeking regulatory approval to operate aircraft in Australia", as first reported by Australian Aviation. VietJet is yet to name that lessee, but Cherrie Aviation is the only Australian company named on the aircraft's registration.

VietJet's VH-T8A on the CASA aircraft register

Who Is Cherrie Aviation?

Public records show Cherrie Aviation Pty Ltd was registered with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) on 20 August 2026, just over a month before VH-T8A was added to the CASA register.

In other words, this isn't an established operator picking up an extra aircraft. The timeline points to a company created specifically to receive VietJet's first Australian aircraft, which is usually how a foreign airline sets up a local subsidiary.

Cherrie Aviation was registered with ASIC in August

VietJet has little choice in this. Most foreign airlines are not permitted to fly domestic routes in Australia, so any domestic operation must be run by an Australian company holding its own air operator certificate from CASA. The rules do allow a domestic-only airline to be foreign-owned, subject to a national interest test. Singapore's Tiger Airways used this structure in 2007, when it launched Tiger Airways Australia.

VietJet hasn't confirmed who owns Cherrie Aviation, and the company's shareholders aren't listed in its public summary. Still, a Melbourne company created five weeks before it received a VietJet-owned 737 isn't hard to read.

How This Fits With The Sydney Slots

The registration adds weight to a theory we published back in June. At that time, Sydney Airport's slot coordinator had allocated 2,252 take-off and landing slots for the 26/27 Northern Winter season to an unnamed operator listed only as "Blank," with the placeholder code YY. The accompanying seat allocation worked out to almost exactly 189 seats per flight.

As it so happens, the VietJet aircraft now registered in Australia is listed as being a Boeing 737 MAX 8 in a 189-seat layout. Nobody has officially linked the Sydney slots to VietJet, so this is still circumstantial. But each new piece of evidence points the same way.

VietJet was once nicknamed the bikini airline

Summing Up

A registered jet doesn't make an airline, and CASA will decide whether this one ever carries passengers. But in the space of three months, VietJet has gone from anonymous sources and placeholder codes to a Melbourne company with a brand-new Boeing on the Australian register.

If the regulator gives its approval, the Qantas-Virgin duopoly may finally face a challenger backed by an airline group with real money and a very large order book.