After almost three decades of lacking direct flight, a US passenger plane on Thursday left San Francisco for Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon.  

The United Airlines flight 869 left San Francisco with 300 more passengers, including Vietnamese and US officials and businessmen. The Boeing 747-400 will arrive in Ho Chi Minh City on Friday after 20-hour flight.

In 1975, the last American commercial flight, a Pan Am carrier, left Saigon and Vietnam has imposed a ban on American carriers for landing in the country since that.

"Bilateral relations are on the move and they are broadening and deepening. That is the kind of development that was bound to happen," Ton Nu Thi Ninh, vice chairwoman of the External Relations Committee of Vietnam's parliament, told reporters in Washington.

United Airlines daily flights via Hong Kong will serve between San Francisco and Ho Chi Minh City, Ninh said.

The carrier's new daily service is one result of the improving ties between the two countries. US lifted the trade embargo a decade ago and established diplomatic relations in the 1990s. In 2003, the two countries signed a landmark aviation agreement allowing passenger and cargo flights between the two countries.

(Xinhua News Agency December 10, 2004)