PRIVACY POLICY

1. Introduction

• 1.1 Lao Airlines State Enterprise “we/us/our” or “Lao Airlines”) is committed to protecting your privacy. We established guidelines for protecting personal data that you provided us when you purchase, redeem or use our products and services, visit our website, use our mobile application or otherwise interact with us through any media or platform.
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• 1.2 This Privacy Policy is intended to explain our privacy practices and covers the following areas:
  • Types of Personal Data We Collect
  • How We Collect Personal Data
  • Usage and Disclosure of Personal Data
  • Transmission, Storage and Security of Personal Data
  • Your Rights and How to Contact us
  • Links to Third Parties’ Websites
  • Changes to Privacy Policy
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• 1.3 If you are based in the European Economic Area (the EEA) during your interactions with us (except when you are in the EEA solely for travel purposes), the EU Data Protection Addendum (which is incorporated herein by reference) applies to your personal data.
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2. Types of Personal Data We Collect

Types of personal data we collect will vary depending on the collection situation and types of products or services you request. We will collect and process all or some of the following personal data about you:

• 2.1 Personal Identification data: such as name, photograph, gender, date of birth, passport number, nationality, any citizen identity document, or any identification numbers relating to personal identification;
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• 2.2 Contact information: such as address, telephone number, and email address;
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• 2.3 Payment information: such as invoice information, credit or debit card information, and bank account information;
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• 2.4 Travel information: such as your travel itinerary (e.g. flight booking, hotel reservation), personal data of your travel companion, ground service requests, seat and meal preferences, in-flight service requests, and any supplementary or special service requests;
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• 2.5 Information about your frequent flyer membership: such as your membership number, registration details (username & sign-in details), QR code, the number of points, your tier and your accrual and redemption activities. We may collect your membership number that you have with other airline if that airline has participated in loyalty program with us;
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• 2.6 Information about your interest and preferences: we may collect information about your interest and preferences based on your previous experiences with us, including your previous travel arrangements, lounge and in-flight experiences or participation in our marketing research or any campaign, your feedback and customer satisfaction survey;
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• 2.7 Information about your employment: if you are an employee travelling or obtaining products or services in relation to our corporate travel arrangement with any of our corporate or government clients, we will collect certain information about your employment, relationship with our corporate or government clients such as your company’s or employer’s name, your professional title and your work contact information;
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• 2.8 Information about our interactions: If you contact us, we will keep a record of that correspondence, including your calls, written queries or interactions with us on social media;
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• 2.9 Website application and other digital media usage: When you visit our website (www.laoairlines.com) or use our mobile application, we may collect your IP address, location data, browser type, operating system, web browsing behavior, duration of use, referring website, interest and application usage through cookies and other tracking technologies. For more information, please refer to our cookies policy.
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3. How We Collect Personal Data

• 3.1 We may collect your personal data directly or from your authorized representatives or your employer, such as when you give us your personal data or request for products or services through our website, mobile application or any other channels; for example, flight reservation, check-in, frequent flyer program application, special assistance request, including any offline transactions such as information provision through our ticket counters and airport operations.
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• 3.2 We may also receive your personal information through a third-party, such as airline partners, business partners, travel agents or our service providers, tourism representatives, and relevant government officials.
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4. Usage and Disclosure of Personal Data

We may use your personal data in the following ways:

• To deliver our travel products and services:
  • To deliver our travel products and services such as to administer ticket sales, flight reservations, or freight services.
  • To process payments and verify your identity.
  • To provide check-in, lounge services, baggage services, ground services and in-flight services and to offer special assistance requested by you.

  We may transfer your personal data to our airline partners, alliances or transport operators to coordinate and facilitate your travel arrangements (e.g. flight connection). If passengers request special assistance for their journeys (e.g. medical assistance or meal request), we may share personal data with medical centers, hospitals or certified clinics, and our catering service providers, to provide such assistance.

• To improve and personalize our products and services:

  To improve and innovate our products and services, we may analyze information you provide to us via customer satisfaction survey or marketing research (e.g. your previous travel arrangement, communication preferences) and information about your website and mobile application usage (e.g. products and services you browsed) to better understand your needs and desires. We may tailor our products and services to better match your interests and preferences. We may share your personal data with our business partners such as airline partner, alliances, other transport operators and frequent flyer program operators, so that such third parties may improve and personalize their services to you as well.

• To communicate with you:
  • To provide customer support services such as sending you flight updates and notifications.
  • To responding to your questions or complaints.
  • To handling any refunds and claims (e.g. lost luggage claims and flight delays).
• To facilitate the frequent flyer program:

  If you are a member of the frequent flyer program, we may process your personal data in order to operate the program e.g. by flying with us, you may earn points and redeem awards with your points, or obtain discount.

• For marketing:
  • To provide you with updates and offers, where you have chosen to receive these.
  • We may also use your personal data to market our products and services, and the products and services of our group companies and business partners such as airline partners, alliances, other transport operators and frequent flyer program operators.
  • We may send you marketing communications by post, email, SMS, phone and social media such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and WhatsApp. 
  • We will provide an option to unsubscribe or opt-out of further communication on any marketing communication sent to you.
  • We may share your personal data with our group companies and business partners such as airline partners, alliances, other transport operators, frequent flyer program operators and social network providers, so they can send marketing communication which may be of interest to you.
• For safety and security purposes:

  We may conduct checks and in-flight monitoring to ensure safety and security of our staff and personnel, and carry out verification procedures to prevent fraud or unlawful activities. This may include disclosing your personal data to airport authorities, immigration, customs and border controls.

• To comply with legal or regulatory obligations:

  We may process your personal data to comply with our regulatory requirements or dialogue with regulators as applicable, which may include disclosing your personal data to third parties, the court service and/or regulators or law enforcement agencies in connection with enquiries, proceedings or investigations by such parties anywhere in the world or where compelled to do so. Where permitted, we will direct any such request to you or notify you before responding unless to do so would prejudice the prevention or detection of a crime.

• To ensure our websites and mobile application function properly:

  To ensure our online service including www.laoairlines.com and the mobile application are available. We may process information about your web browser, your mobile application usage behavior, location data, IP address that are collected via cookies or similar tracking technologies to configure the best setting of our online services and to optimize user experience.

• To re-organize or make changes to our business:

  In the event that we: (i) are subject to negotiations for the sale of our business or part thereof to a third party; (ii) are sold to a third party; or (iii) undergo a re-organization, we may need to transfer some or all of your personal data to the relevant third party (or its advisors) as part of any due diligence process for the purpose of analyzing any proposed sale or re-organization. We may also need to transfer your personal information to that re-organized entity or third party after the sale or reorganization for them to use for the same purposes as set out in this Privacy Policy.

Please note that in addition to the disclosures we have identified above, we may disclose your personal data for the purposes set out above to service providers (e.g. IT operators, payment service providers, marketing agencies, ground handlers, catering service providers), contractors (e.g. call center), agents (e.g. travel agents), advisors (e.g. legal, financial, business or other advisors) and our affiliates that perform activities on our behalf, as well as our group companies.

5. Transmission, Storage and Security of Personal Data

• 5.1 Security

  No data transmission over the Internet or website can be guaranteed to be secure from intrusion. However, we will take appropriate technical and organizational measures to ensure your privacy is protected in accordance with data protection legislative requirements. All information you provided to us is stored on our or our service providers’ secure servers which can be accessed and used according to our security policies and standards. We will deploy technical measures and appropriate management to secure and safeguard your personal data such as the safety protocol (Secure Sockets Layer: SSL) for the Internet encryption. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our websites, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential and for complying with any other security procedures that we have notified you. We ask you not to share the password with anyone.

• 5.2 Export of personal data

  Your personal data may be transferred to, stored at, and/or accessed by staff or service providers in a destination outside the country in which you are located, whose data protection laws may be of a lower standard than those in your country.

• 5.3 Storage

  Our retention periods for personal data are based on business needs and legal requirements. Your personal data is secured for as long as the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy is concerned, or under the rule of law, or for any legal actions. For example, we may retain: (i) certain transaction details and correspondence until the time limit for claims arising from the transaction with us has expired; or (ii) certain data to comply with regulatory requirements regarding the retention of such data. Where personal data is no longer needed, we either irreversibly anonymize the data (in which case we may further retain and use the anonymized data) or securely destroy the data.

6. Your Rights and How to Contact Us

• 6.1 Your rights

  You can request an access or update and correct your personal data, in certain circumstances, you may have the rights under European data protection law to:

  • Require us to delete any personal data that we no longer have a lawful ground to use;
  • Where processing is based on consent, withdraw your consent so that we stop that particular processing;
  • Require us to transmit the personal data you have provided to us and we still hold about you to a third party electronically;
  • Object to any processing based on the legitimate interests ground unless our reasons for undertaking that processing outweigh any prejudice to your data protection rights; and
  • Restrict how we use your personal data e.g. whilst a complaint is being investigated.

  The request for exercise your rights must be done in writing. Please provide your name, e-mail and FlyerBonus number or booking code or reservation code to help us identify your information more readily.

• 6.2 Opt-out of marketing

  You have the right to opt-out of our marketing communications at any time by

  • Unsubscribing from the mailing list; or
  • Editing the relevant account settings to unsubscribe;

• 6.3 How to contact us

  If you have any questions in relation to this Privacy Policy, please contact us at:
  Lao Airlines State Enterprise, Wattay International airport, Souphanouvong Avenue P.O. Box 6441, Vientiane, Lao PDR

7. Links to Third Parties’ Websites

Our website and mobile application may have links to the website of a third-party. If you follow these links, the Privacy Policy will not apply. You should remain alert when you leave our site and read the privacy statements of other websites. We have no control over Personal Data that you submit to or receive from these third parties.

8. Changes to Privacy Policy

We may revise and change this Privacy Policy from time to time to align with any alterations of our service and operation, and to comply with the relevant law. The latest version of the policy will be announced on our website at www.laoairlines.com

This Privacy Policy has been updated on 29 February 2024.