HCM City (VNA) - Authorities have proposed an expansion plan for HCM City’s Tan Son NhatAirport that will enable it to handle 45 million passengers a year.

It has a designed capacityof 25 million passengers but handled 32 million last year. The airport has beengrowing at 30 percent annually, and this growth is expected to continue for thenext three years, meaning it is certain to be even more severely overloadedbefore things get better.

There will then be ashortage of everything from runway, parking, terminals and even space fortransport in its vicinity.

The Ministry ofDefence has already pitched in by moving all military training operations from Tan Son NhatAirport to Bien Hoa Airport in the neighbouring province of Dong Nai. 

Two plots of military land measuring 21ha and7.63ha will be handed over tothe Ministry of Transport to expand Tan Son Nhat’s parking space to accommodate96 aircraft at a time.

The ministry has givenassent to the Civil AviationAuthority of Vietnam (CAAV)’s proposal to build a new mixed-use terminal with acapacity of 10 million passengers a year within 12 months. It will be built ona three-hectare former military land.

On its completion, the terminal along with theexisting T1 and T2 will take the total capacity to 38 million passengers ayear.

A plan is also taking shape to build a fourthterminal also on military land and handle another 10 million passengers a year.

To access the T4 terminal, Cong Hoa Street willbe widened using military land, and it will also make access to the otherterminals easier.

The director of HCM City’s transport department,Bui Xuan Cuong, said that in 2017 his department would carry out deploy sixdifferent works to ease traffic around the airport at a total cost of nearly 1.4trillion VND, including two flyovers at the intersections of Truong Son – BinhLoi streets in Tan Binh district and Nguyen Thai Son – Nguyen Kiem streets inGo Vap district.

To cope with thetraffic congestion around the airport, a consultancy company submitted three different proposals at a recent meetingwith Deputy Prime MinisterTrinh Dinh Dung.

Under the first, all infrastructure likerunways, terminals, parking space will be built on what is now a golf courseand a residential area around it.

The airport’s capacity will go up to 60 millionpassengers a year but it will take 10 – 15 years to move 140,000 households andcost around 200 trillion VND.

Under the second proposal, one more runway willbe built in addition to terminal T4. It will cost 61 trillion VND, take eightto 10 years to build and increase the capacity to around 45 million passengersa year.

Under the third plan, most of the newconstruction will be on military land, it will cost only around 20 trillion VNDand take three years, but still be large enough to serve around 45 millionpassengers a year.

Deputy PM Dung and other authorities opted forthe third plan and are preparing to submit it to the Government for approval.-VNA