A rendering of the new passenger terminal at HCM City’s Tân Sơn Nhất international airport. — Photo courtesy of the Airports Corporation of Vietnam

HCM CITY — The Defence Ministry has been urged to hand over some 28 hectares of land for the construction of a third passenger terminal at HCM City’s Tân Sơn Nhất airport and a connecting road in order to tackle congestion at the country’s busiest airport.

Of the land, 16.05ha will be for building the terminal and another 11.89ha for a road connecting the terminal and nearby Trần Quốc Hoàn and Cộng Hòa streets in Tân Bình District.

Speaking at a meeting on July 26, Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính has assigned Deputy Prime Minister Lê Văn Thành to oversee the project to build the new terminal and the road so that the construction can start in the third quarter and be completed in 2024 at the latest.

The Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV) and the city government will be responsible for allocating funds for site clearance and compensation for the construction of the new terminal and the road, according to the PM.

The PM has also asked the ministries of Defence and Transport, and ACV to work with agencies to remove 12 concrete blocks at the airport, which used to protect fighter jets during wartime, to increase space for wide-body aircraft.

PM Chính also ordered HCM City authorities to quickly complete approved road expansion projects around the airport to resolve traffic congestion.

The PM had constantly urged speeding up preparations for the construction of the terminal.

During his field trip to the airport last Saturday, PM Chính asked ministries, agencies and the HCM City government to expand cooperation to address congestion at the country’s largest airport.

In 2020, the Government approved the project to build T3 Terminal at Tân Sơn Nhất airport at a cost of VNĐ10.99 trillion (US$470.5 million), using the ACV’s budget. Construction is expected to take 37 months.

Tân Sơn Nhất was originally designed to serve 25 million passengers per year by 2020, but it has been serving almost 40 million since 2017.

The airport currently has two terminals, with T1 terminal serving domestic flights and T2 handling international flights.

T1 terminal can serve up to 15 million passengers a year, while T2 terminal can provide service to 10 million passengers per annum. 

Once operational, the new terminal T3 will be able to serve up to 20 million passengers annually.

The new facility will handle domestic flights, helping to ease pressure on T1 Terminal, which is currently overloaded, and improve service quality.

However, implementation of the project has been postponed due to problems related to site clearance and procedures related to land use planning.

In recent years, the number of passengers travelling via the airport has surged, nearly doubling its designed capacity, especially once the COVID-19 pandemic was contained. 

The growth in the number of passengers after the pandemic and during the summer has shown the strong recovery of the economy, especially the aviation industry and tourism activities. However, this has caused an overload at major airports such as Nội Bài in Hà Nội and Tân Sơn Nhất in HCM City.

In the first six months of 2022, the number of travellers at airports across the country reached 40.7 million, a year-on-year increase of 56.8 per cent. The airports are projected to welcome 87.8 million passengers for the whole year, up 190 per cent in comparison with 2021. — VNS