HCMC – The ministries of transport and national defense have agreed plans to add a terminal at the fast growing Tan Son Nhat International Airport in HCMC and build more access roads to ease rising congestion in the airport area.
The plans were discussed at a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung yesterday.
The nation’s busiest airport is expected to serve more than 31 million passengers this year while its designed capacity is only 25 million, Lai Xuan Thanh, director general of the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) under the transport ministry, said at the meeting.
To ease overload at the airport, CAAV has reduced the number of flights at Tan Son Nhat to 38-40 an hour from the previous 40-42.
Thanh said the airport would need an extra terminal to serve ten million more passengers a year and an area where 90-100 planes could be parked at a time and to raise the airport’s handling capacity to 40 million passengers a year.
The Ministry of Transport has worked with the Ministry of National Defense over the possibility of using a military-controlled area for parking commercial planes and will send a document on the cooperation plan and related regulations to the latter for consideration on August 20, he added.
A representative of the defense ministry said the ministry has agreed on construction of a fresh terminal for both civil and military aviation services at a location near Hoang Hoa Tham Street and handing over an internal road in the airport to the transport ministry. The road runs from Phan Thuc Duyen Street to the intersection of Truong Chinh and Cong Hoa streets and is expected to reduce congestion on other roads leading to the airport.
Bui Xuan Cuong, director of the HCMC Department of Transport, asked the Government to allow the city to use its own budget to build steel overpasses at the crossroads of Truong Son-Hong Ha streets and Nguyen Thai Son-Pham Van Dong streets.
Regarding solutions to tackling chronic traffic jams on the roads leading to Tan Son Nhat, the airport’s director Dang Tuan Tu suggested the city limit traffic on Truong Son Street, the main road to the airport.
He said Truong Son Street has become a key road for vehicles from Thu Duc, Go Vap and Binh Thanh districts to travel to Tan Binh, Tan Phu districts and District 12 since Pham Van Dong Street in Thu Duc was opened to traffic.
Deputy Prime Minister Dung said building one more terminal and opening more roads to Tan Son Nhat are the best way to double the airport’s capacity and save costs.
He requested the ministries to draw up their plans early and send them to the Government for approval, as well as find investors to build the new terminal under the public-private partnership (PPP) or build-operate-own (BOO) format.
The city government is assigned to connect roads leading to the airport to reduce traffic gridlock.
Ministries act to ease congestion in airport area
