Taxiway upgrades complete at Tan Son Nhat airport

Built of concrete and asphalt, each taxiway is 200 meters long and 45 meters wide.

They belong to the second phase of a project to upgrade Tan Son Nhat International Airport, set for completion by the end of this year.

This phase includes work on five existing taxiways and new rapid exit taxiways, connecting taxiways and parallel taxiways besides a drainage system, setting up taxiway lights, and aviation signboards.

Tran Van Thi, director of the My Thuan Project Management Board, authorized by the Ministry of Transport to manage the airport upgrade project, said the board and contractors are trying their best to boost progress to meet the target of completion.

Last month, the project had been suspended for 20 days since Aug. 5 after several staff at the construction site tested positive for the new coronavirus.

"For the past four months, almost 700 engineers and workers have been staying back at the construction site after work to avoid any possible risks of contracting Covid-19 from outside."

For now, the entire project is around 60 percent complete.

The entire project to upgrade Tan Son Nhat will cost a total VND2 trillion (over $86 million).

The first phase to upgrade runway 25R/07L, three kilometers long and 46 meters wide, was completed late last year after it was started in July. During that period, the entire runway was closed.

Tan Son Nhat, the country's largest airport, has been overloaded for many years and the resultant damage has been evident in visible cracks and deformation and subsidence of the asphalt surface on its runways and taxiways, which have been reported since 2016.

The airport has been serving 36 million passengers a year since 2017, well above its designed capacity, which was 25 million passengers per year by 2020.