HANOI: The Vietnamese government has approved plans to build a new $18 billion airport near Ho Chi Minh City that will offer a projected 100 million passenger capacity to replace the congested Tan Son Nhat International Airport.
The proposal for the new airport, to be named Long Thanh International, was voted through the country’s national Assembly with a near-90% majority. The airport, due to be built on a Greenfield site some 25 miles outside Ho Chi Minh City, is scheduled to start operations in seven years.
Construction is slated to begin next year, and will be carried out in three phases, supervising engineers Japan Airports Consultants said. The first phase, which costs $7.8 billion, will see the first runway, passenger terminals, air traffic control tower, and support service buildings completed and ready for use by 2023.
Initial capacity is set for 17 million passengers per year, but that will rise to 100 million passengers and five million tonnes of cargo a year by 2050.
The existing maximum capacity at Tan Son Nhat is around 25 million passengers, and projections indicate it will hit that in two years. It currently handles 20 million passengers a year, but Vietnam has seen dramatic expansion of both full service and low-cost airline schedules in recent years causing delays and chronic congestion at several airports.
Once completed, the new airport would give Vietnam one of the largest passenger capabilities in Southeast Asia.
