HCMC – The Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi may be overwhelmed due to fast-growing passenger traffic, according to Deputy Prime Minister Le Van Thanh.
During a working session at the airport yesterday, September 21, Thanh urged speeding up the planning process so that construction of a new runway and passenger terminal can begin between 2024 and 2025.
The airport is forecast to handle 50 million passengers by 2030, well above the current passenger handling capacity of 25 million.
Noi Bai will be the country’s main cargo transshipment and passenger transit hub, along with the under-construction Long Thanh International Airport, according to Dinh Viet Thang, director of the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam.
By 2030, the airport will have three passenger terminals, T1, T2, and the planned T3, with a combined annual capacity of 60-70 million passengers per year.
Its handling capacity will reach 100 million people per year with four passenger terminals by 2050, according to a plan by ADP Ingénierie, a French engineering company.
Still, concerns with land clearance have remained arduous challenges in the project’s implementation process.
The airport now has two passenger terminals, with a capacity of 25 million passengers per year, as well as a cargo terminal, with a capacity of 400,000 tons per year.
In 2019, the airport served over 29 million passengers and 695,000 tons of cargo.
Between 2010 and 2019, the average growth rate for passenger transport was around 13%, compared to 14.5% for freight transport.
