Overseas ambitions, bumper plane orders test Vietnam's 'bikini airline'

VietJet Air has gone from start-up to Vietnam's largest private airline in 5 years. Now it is pushing overseas to keep up that growth and absorb a bumper order of more than 200 planes: no easy task in a cutthroat southeast Asian market. The airline, which was set up in 2011, has tapped a rich vein - a fast-growing economy and a young population that was starting to travel more. But VietJet's next step will be more challenging, industry analysts and executives say, as it expands further beyond Vietnam into choked southeast Asia, competitive China or Russia, where VietJet's fleet of narrowbody jets would confine it to the country's east. Infrastructure in the region is clogged and new airport slots are rare. That has raised questions about VietJet's ability to absorb one of the region's largest aircraft orders. <br/>