VietNamNet Bridge – Doubts have been raised that reports about the overloading at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in HCM City have been “fabricated” to support the urgent construction of Long Thanh Airport.

National Assembly deputies and scientists, when discussing the Long Thanh Airport project in Dong Nai province, discovered major differences in the numbers of flights taking off and landing, the number of passengers, and volume of goods going through Tan Son Nhat Airport in the 2005-2012 period.

These figures were released by the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) and HCM City Statistics Office (HSO).

The CAAV’s report showed that 17.5 million passengers went through the Tan Son Nhat Airport in 2012, while HSO said 9.6 million.

CAAV, in an official document, explained that input materials for HSO’s calculation were sourced from the Tan Son Nhat Airport Operation Center (TOC), a unit belonging to Vietnam Airlines.

The reports provided to HSO monthly and annually only counted the transportation output of Vietnam Airlines. This did not include flights provided by other air carriers in Vietnam.

HSO, in a document released on December 15, 2014, confirmed that the input materials were from TOC, and did not include flights provided by non-Vietnam Airlines carriers.

Therefore, CAAV, which said the figures about Vietnam Airlines’ operations alone could not reflect the capacity and operation of the HCM City airport, has released a new report about the airport’s operations.

However, the problem has still not been clarified.

Dr. Nguyen Thien Tong, a renowned aviation expert, one of two authors of the “golden air route”, who suggested a new itinerary for HCM City – Hanoi flights, pointed out that there are still significant differences in the new report released by CAAV and the report released by HSO, which also quoted CAAV’s statistics.

Tong said that the figures about 2013 operations shown in HSO’s report, which quoted CAAV’s statistics, and the report from CAAV were quite different.

An analyst noted that the differences had been discovered before by aviation experts when the Ministry of Transport submitted the plan on building Long Thanh Airport to the National Assembly.

The ministry has repeatedly urged building Long Thanh Airport in Dong Nai province, saying that Tan Son Nhat Airport is now overloaded.

Meanwhile, the books published by HSO each year are believed to be a reliable information source.

Tan Son Nhat Airport in December 2013 received the 20 millionth passenger of the year. The capacity of 20 million passengers per annum has been attained three years sooner than planned.

Thanh Lich