HCMC airport terminal to be built in shape of ao dai

The Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV), which operates all 22 civilian airports in the country, said it decided to choose the ao dai design and is set to invite bids from builders for work to start this quarter.

The terminal would have a curved roof stretching all the way to the central garden of a commercial-office complex to be built inside the airport, it said.

It would be "reminiscent of the lines and shape of the Vietnamese ao dai," it said.

The garden and the complex are the two main items in the terminal package.

The terminal has been designed to ensure ventilation and light thanks to a combination of parks, elevated squares, lakes, and vertical gardens, the ACV added.

The terminal will have an annual capacity of 20 million passengers to ease the overload on existing terminals.

The work is expected to cost VND10.99 trillion (US$470 million) and will be fully funded by the ACV, a joint-stock company owned 95.4 percent by the government.

An artist's impression of the check-in area of Tan Son Nhat's T3 terminal. Photo by Airports Corporation of Vietnam

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh instructed the Ministry of National Defense at a meeting last week to hand over 16.05 hectares of land to the ACV to build the terminal.

The work has to start in the third quarter so that the terminal could open in Sep. 2024, he said.

Tan Son Nhat is currently the largest and busiest airport in Vietnam, with Terminals 1 and 2 respectively used for domestic and international flights.

At its busiest, the airport handles 840-850 flights and 130,000 passengers a day.

The airport has been overloaded for years, and the result is visible cracks and deformation and subsidence of the asphalt on its runways and taxiways.

It has been serving 36 million passengers a year since 2017 as against its designed capacity of 25 million a year by 2020.