Noi Bai airport runway upgrade completed

Costing a total VND2.03 trillion ($87.4 million) of the state budget, a large-scale project was launched last July to renovate the capital airport, comprising work to upgrade two runways, 1A and 1B.

The 1A runway was reopened in January after being shut last October, and the upgrade of the 1B runway has now been finished after one month.

The project also includes construction of three new taxiways, upgrades to existing ones, new indicator lighting along with a drainage system and other flight management facilities. All have been completed.

"Noi Bai airport has basically met the conditions to receive all modern aircraft in the world in all weather conditions, limiting airport transfers in bad weather," said a representative of Thang Long Project Management Board under the Ministry of Transport, the main investor of the project.

The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam has allowed Noi Bai to increase its flight frequency to 40 flights per hour in daytime and 30 flights per hour at night between April 23 and 30 compared to just 23 flights per hour as usual.

The adjustment would serve the higher demand for travel during the upcoming holiday.

April 30 is Reunification Day and May 1, International Labor Day, both falling on a weekend this year, which means a four-day break.

Runway 1B had been seriously damaged after 16 years of operation while runway 1A is of better quality thanks to an upgrade six years ago.

Since 2017, Noi Bai has been chronically overloaded, receiving new-generation aircraft with huge loads, which has degraded its runways and taxiways.

The number of passengers and cargo passing through the airport has been increasing by an average 10 percent per year to nearly 26 million passengers in 2018 and about 29 million in 2019. However, the airport is only designed to handle 25 million passengers per year, with domestic terminal T1 having a capacity of 15 million and international terminal T2, 10 million.