Gia Lai Provincial People's Committee (proposal to the Prime Minister of Vietnam)

Vietnam.vn, citing Báo Gia Lai on October 25, 2026, says the People's Committee of Gia Lai province sent the prime minister a proposal to pilot unmanned flying taxis, which it describes as AAM/eVTOL, from October 2026 through the end of 2028. It says Document No. 12979/UBND-XDCT was signed on October 21 by chairman Pham Anh Tuan. The committee asks the prime minister to consider and approve the pilot and to direct ministries to help complete the legal steps. The article says the document and a draft proposal also went to the ministries of construction, national defence, public security, foreign affairs, and science and technology. A request to consider an approval is not an approval.

VnExpress reported on October 26 that Gia Lai has sought government approval for the same window and the same two route lengths near Quy Nhon. VnExpress does not print the document number and does not say the addressee is the prime minister.

Vietnam.vn says the proposal starts with the Quy Nhon–Phu Cat cluster, over low-density areas and water. Route 1, Children's Park to the marina, between Quy Nhon ward and Quy Nhon Nam ward, is approximately 3.4 km and would be used to verify technology, operating systems, procedures, training and emergency response. Route 2, Phu Cat Airport to the Blooming Sky Project Grand Concert Center in Cat Tien commune, is approximately 22 km and is described as a test of an airport-to-destination link and of limited passenger-transport capacity. The article says the number of vehicles is expected to be one or two, provided by partners, and that the proposal is technologically neutral and does not pre-designate the aircraft or the supplier. VnExpress calls the second site the Grand Music Festival Center under the Blooming Sky project and also says one or two vehicles would come from corporate partners. Neither account names a manufacturer.

Vietnam.vn says the pilot is not to exceed three years and is divided into preparation and evaluation without flights, test flights with and without cargo carrying experts, and a limited passenger-transport pilot plus a summary. A later phase would require the matching safety milestone. VnExpress describes the middle phase as unloaded test flights followed by expert-led trials. This entry does not merge those two wordings. Both accounts say the state would fund management, independent safety assessment, training, oversight and pilot infrastructure, and that businesses would supply aircraft, people, maintenance, insurance and incident response. Vietnam.vn says paid passenger service would require the vehicle, operator, personnel, airspace and landing strip to meet the legal requirements. VnExpress says commercial passenger service would require the aircraft, crews, airspace and vertiports to meet them. Neither says those conditions are met.

Vietnam.vn says the document cites Resolution No. 57-NQ/TW, Conclusion No. 99-KL/TW of September 28, 2026, Decision No. 509/QD-TTg, Civil Aviation Law No. 130/2025/QH15, and Clauses 1 and 4 of Article 21 of the Law on Science, Technology and Innovation No. 93/2025/QH15, including a three-year limit on a pilot. Those citations are the article's account. This entry did not open the statutes. The article says current rules do not yet specify certification, operation, vertiports, unmanned traffic management or eVTOL passenger transport, which is the province's argument for a sandbox. That argument is not an authorization. Vietnam.vn says Vietnam's testing so far has been of unmanned cargo aircraft and that a passenger-aircraft test program does not yet exist. VnExpress says unmanned air-taxi trials so far are cargo only. Those statements describe the present. They are not an approval of this proposal.

Gia Lai Provincial People's Committee (proposal to the Prime Minister of Vietnam)

Sources for this note

Where tracked vehicles stand