New airport needed for southern hub

Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Son Nhat Airport was projected to receive 13 million passengers a year by 2015, but handled 20 million passengers in 2013. The airport can also no longer expand due to a lack of available land.

Authorities in Ho Chi Minh City and Dong Nai, home to the planned Long Thanh Airport, believe Tan Son Nhat will face serious overloading during the next two to three years, while the government has yet to make a final decision on Long Thanh.

According to the Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV), it would take around 10 years for the airport to receive government approval, design the site, raise finances, clear the site and then complete construction. They’ve urged the project to start now so that the first stage can be finished by 2020 to handle 25 million passengers and 1.2 million tonnes of cargo a year.

According to a Dong Nai zoning plan, Long Thanh Airport will cover 5,000 hectares in Long Thanh district, located about an hour from Ho Chi Minh City along national highways 1 and 51. This travel time would be cut to less than half an hour when the partly-finished Ho Chi Minh-Long Thanh-Dau Giay motorway opened to traffic on January 2.

The project is planned to be developed in three phases. The first from 2015 to 2020 requires $6.7 billion to build two runways, taxiways, aircraft parking zones and two terminals. In the second phase, another runway will be built and passenger capacity doubled, with cargo capacity increased to 1.5 million tonnes by 2030. In the third phase, the airport would have four runways and be able to handle 100 million passengers and five million tonnes of cargo.

According to the Japanese consultants involved in the project, construction of Long Thanh Airport would cost about $8 billion, while the expansion of Tan Son Nhat Airport, if even possible, would cost up to $9.1 billion.

Despite the fact that Tan Son Nhat is obviously overcrowded, Vietnamese aviation experts have suggested that work on the new airport should not start until the country has experienced a clear economic recovery, and instead suggest expansion plans for Tan Son Nhat Airport.

Aviation experts Le Trong Sanh and Mai Trong Tuan wrote to Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung in July last year asking the government to re-think the new airport project. They said the project required huge funding and building a new airport would be a waste of Tan Son Nhat Airport’s recent expansion and upgrade. They added it was advisable not to build Long Thanh, but to further expand Tan Son Nhat.

The Ministry of Transport, in a report to the Government Office, said Long Thanh provided the best medium to long-term solution and that the three development phases would mitigate for the cost of the project. The ministry added a busier Tan Son Nhat Airport would have an adverse impact on those who live nearby.