The Long Thanh airport’s first phase is expected to become operational in late 2025. (Photo: VietnamPlus)Hanoi (VNA) – The Ministry of Transport has requested greater efforts to put the first phase of the Long Thanh International Airport project in the southern province of Dong Nai into operation in the fourth quarter of 2025.
Accelerating construction of component projects
According the Ministry of Transport, the third component project includes bomb and mine clearance, construction of boundary walls, airfields, and passenger terminals.
At present, the ground clearance compensation for the project still remains slow.
The Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV) has conducted around 65 percent of the bomb and mine clearance workload, which is expected to be finished in December this year. This will make land available for the construction of passenger terminals in February 2022.
ACV also completed about 5.7km out of 8.6 km of boundary walls, and 6.5 out of the 8.6 km foundation of boundary walls, reaching nearly 72 percent of the total workload. The works are s expected to be completed in September 2021.
The leveling and drainage work for passenger terminals and aircraft apron areas will be started in November 2021 to serve the construction of passenger terminals’ foundations in February 2022. Construction of the remaining items will begin in the first quarter of 2022.
ACV is carrying out procedures to select technical design contractors for the airfield, intra-port traffic system, and electricity, water, telecommunication facilities, aiming to ensure that these items will be commenced in 2022, and completed in June 2025.
Construction of passenger terminals is expected to begin in February 2022 and completed in June 2025.
The selection of design contractors for the building of garages, cargo terminal No. 1, and maintenance areas is underway. Technical design work is hoped to be completed in December next year.
The Vietnam Air Traffic Management Corporation (VATM), which is the investor of the sub-project 2, is also selecting consultants for flight management works.
An air traffic control tower and auxiliary items will be built in January 2023 and completed in January 2025.
The ministry has asked VATM and ACV to speed up the construction of the air traffic control tower and passenger terminal – the two important items of the project, in order to avoid affecting the overall progress.
VATM and ACV were also requested to have measures to minimize impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the projects, especially in import of specialized equipment and hiring foreign consultants.
Regarding the project component 4 which includes items of cargo terminal, transportation depot, ground equipment maintenance area, catering area, fuel supply area, logistics area, the ministry will prioritize the construction of aircraft cleaning area, equipment maintenance and ground service areas, catering area, operating center of airlines, aircraft maintenance area in the first phase.
The ministry is developing regulations to select investors for these items, which are expected to be issued this year.
Every month, the ministry holds meetings to direct and urge investors to remove obstacles related to the design work, land clearance, and capital allocation, in order to accelerate the construction and installation of equipment by the end of the first quarter of 2025, and conduct the trial run and put into operation by the end of 2025.
According to ACV, the Long Thanh International Airport will be built in three phases over three decades. In the first phase, one runway with a length of 4,000m, taxiways, an apron, and a passenger terminal with other auxiliary works sprawling 373,000sq.m will be built to serve 25 million passengers and 1.2 million tonnes of cargo each year.
The airport, which was expected to cost 336.63 trillion VND (14.5 billion USD), is designed to have four runways, four passenger terminals, and other auxiliary facilities to ensure a capacity of 100 million passengers and 5 million tonnes of cargo a year by 2040.
Located 40km to the east of Ho Chi Minh City, the Long Thanh airport is expected to relieve overloading at Tan Son Nhat international airport in the southern metropolis, now the country’s largest airport./.
