Saigon's Tan Son Nhat International Airport (TSN) will be expanded in the near future as the Ministry of Defense recently handed over land at the facility to the Ministry of Transport.
As part of the government's ongoing effort to ease overcrowding at the country's busiest airport, VnExpress reports the defense ministry has freed up 21 hectares of land for civil aviation purposes.
According to the news source, two terminals, each capable of serving 10 million passengers a year, will be built by 2018. TSN's current capacity is 25 million passengers annually, however last year the facility handled over 30 million flyers, the newspaper shares.
Tuoi Tre adds that more parking spaces for airliners will also be built on the new land. At the moment, there is demand for 67 parking aprons, while Tan Son Nhat only has 50. Lai Xuan Thanh, head of the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV), told the news source that 30 to 35 new aprons will be built during the expansion. Meanwhile, the newspaper shares that the airport's capacity will increase to 35 million passengers per year, not 45 million.
Thanh added: "By transferring the right to use the land to serve Tan Son Nhat's expansion plan, the defense ministry has made a significant contribution to ease pressure on the airport and to the development of the aviation sector."
The 21 hectares had previously been used by the Vietnam Air Force, which will move two units of planes to an airbase in neighboring Dong Nai province.
Vietnam's airline market is growing at the third fastest rate among Asia-Pacific countries, VnExpress reports, while local airlines have expansion plans in place that will bring their total fleet size to 263 aircraft.
In the long term, the city plans to build the enormous Long Thanh International Airport in Dong Nai to take pressure off Tan Son Nhat but construction has yet to begin, the news source reports.
[Photo via Zing]
