VietJetAir

How about we skip the in-flight movie and go straight to the in-flight bikini show?

A low-cost Vietnamese airline, VietJetAir, decided to forgo the on-screen entertainment in favor of a bikini fashion show on a flight to inaugurate its service from Ho Chi Minh City to the coastal town of Nha Trang earlier this month. Shortly after buzz from the publicity event spread, the airline was fined $950 by the country’s Civil Aviation Administration for organizing the unapproved show, according to the Daily Mail.

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The event lasted for approximately three minutes on the hour-long flight, with contestants from a local beauty pageant participating. We suspect that a good portion of the passengers — at least the male ones — probably didn’t mind too much, though.

When asked about the decision, airline representatives said that the goal was to dress up the girls as Hawaiian dancers: “It was the first flight to a beach town, so we came up with the idea of getting a number of girls in bikinis to dance and make [the] passengers happy to improve our customer service.”

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Established late last year, VietJetAir is the first privately-owned airline in the country to run domestic flights between cities in Vietnam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kDhSgA4TGQ&feature=player_embedded

Erica Ho is a contributor at TIME and the editor of Map Happy. Find her on Twitter at @ericamho and Google+. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.