Two new airports, in Van Don District in the northern province of Quang Ninh and in Phan Thiet City in the south-central province of Binh Thuan, will be inaugurated by the year 2020. The new airports are expected to raise Vietnam’s air transport capacity to 64 million people annually.
The new openings are part of a Vietnamese government plan for air transport development, with a vision to have 28 operational airports by 2030.
According to the plan, by 2020 Vietnam will have had a total of 13 domestic airports and ten international airdromes, including the four gateway airports of Noi Bai (Hanoi), Tan Son Nhat (Ho Chi Minh City), Da Nang and Cam Ranh.
By 2030, there will have been 15 domestic airports and 13 international airports in Vietnam, with the addition of Long Thanh International Airport, which is planned for construction in 2019 in the southern province of Dong Nai, as the country’s fifth gateway airport.
The government plan looks to put Vietnam in the leading four countries in Southeast Asia in terms of air transport volume by the year 2030, with a total fleet size of 400 modern aircraft.
Quang Ninh’s Van Don District is one of three special administrative and economic zones Vietnam plans to develop that will incorporate specific policies and mechanisms in order to attract international investors.
The special zones will function as a new model to stimulate growth and lure foreign investment, said Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung at a merger and acquisition forum last year.
Phan Thiet is a popular resort city on the south-central coast of Vietnam, which attracted nearly 600,000 foreign visits in 2017, mostly from Russia, China and South Korea, according to the online portal of Binh Thuan Province.
With the opening of the new airports, Vietnam’s air transport capacity is expected increase to around 64 million passengers and 570,000 metric tons of cargo yearly in 2020.
By 2030, up to 131 million passengers and 1.7 million tons of cargo will have been transported by air each year in Vietnam, according to the plan.
Source: Tuan Son