Work started on the terminal project in December 2019. At that time, it was scheduled to be finished in late 2021, but the Covid-19 pandemic tampered with the deadline, which is now March of next year.
The new terminal is designed to look like the famous Hue Citadel.
An artist’s rendering of the terminal.
Costing VND2.25 trillion ($97.4 million), the project, funded by the state-run Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV), will include a terminal, roads, parking lots and other facilities.
The airport’s second terminal will take up 22,380 square meters and serve five million passengers per year, including a million foreigners. Capacity is expected to climb to nine million passengers by 2030.
Once the ‘citadel’ terminal opens, Phu Bai’s current terminal, which has the capacity to serve 1.5 million passengers per year, will be for cargo only.
Photo by Consultant and Inspection Sole Co., Ltd of Construction Technology and Equipment (CONINCO).
The first floor will have a lobby, a baggage claim area, a VIP waiting room, a lost and found room, as well as customs and security zones.
The terminal seen from the airport’s runway.
Phu Bai Airport was built by the French in 1940 for both military and civilian purposes.
In 2013, ACV spent VND700 billion upgrading the airport to allow it to serve larger planes such as the Airbus A320/A321 models and other aircraft of equivalent sizes.
Vietnam's former imperial capital of Hue, now the capital of Thua Thien Hue Province, was the seat of the Nguyen Dynasty (1802 - 1945), Vietnam's last royal family, and is home to five UNESCO heritage sites.
The province received 2.05 million visitors last year, including 260,000 foreigners. In the pre-pandemic year of 2019, it received 4.81 million visitors including 2.18 million foreigners.
