VietNamNet Bridge - The Ministry of Transport (MOT) wants to develop Long Thanh Airport in Dong Nai province into an international transit airport but experts believe the proposal is too vague.

MOT emphasized that Long Thanh would replace the existing Tan Son Nhat Airport to serve as a large transit airport in the region.

The ministry predicted that a large modern airport needs to be built to satisfy the increasingly high number of passengers, estimated to reach 100 million by 2030.

However, Nguyen Bach Phuc, chair of the HCM City Association of Consultants in Science Technology and Management (HASCON), does not think Vietnam would receive such a high number of passengers by 2030.

Phuc said that Long Thanh was located on international air routes to Indonesia, the Philippines and Australia. Of these, Indonesia and the Philippines are nearby, which means that Long Thanh won’t have the opportunity to become a transit site for them.

In theory, Long Thanh can only serve as a transit airport for Australia.

“However, Australia only has 20 million people. How will there be passengers to transit at Long Thanh before heading for Australia?” he said.

Phuc said there were four other international airports near Long Thanh, namely Tan Son Nhat, Can Tho, Phu Quoc and Cam Ranh. As such, Long Thanh would only be a transit place for the passengers to fly to Vung Tau City, Con Dao Island, Truong Sa military airport, Tan Son Nhat, Bien Hoa, Lien Khuong, Buon Me Thuot and the military Thanh Son – Phan Rang airports.

If so, Long Thanh will not have a huge sum of passengers as estimated by MOT.

Nguyen Thien Tong from the Hanoi University of Technology said that it is a vague hope to develop Long Thanh into a large transit airport in the region, because no foreign air carrier considers Tan Son Nhat, a big airport in Vietnam, as a transit airport.

In the future, Tong said, in order to become a regional transit airport, Long Thanh needs to be powerful enough to compete with Singapore’s Changi, Thailand’s Suvarnabhumi in Bangkok, Hong Kong’s Chek Lap Kok and Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur airports.

Tong also warned that the Long Thanh project faces high risks, as figures by designers have not been reliable.

Experts said that it would be better to expand existing Tan Son Nhat Airport instead of building Long Thanh. 

With a total area of 1,500 hectares, Tan Son Nhat could be upgraded to serve 80 million passengers a year, while the upgrade would cost only $2-3 billion.

Dan Viet