The Da Nang airport is one of Viet Nam’s three largest, and it serves an important gateway for air transport in Central Viet Nam and Central Highlands. The work is now underway on track for the second stage of an around 420 billion VND (over 18.1 million US$) project expanding an aircraft apron at the Da Nang International Airport, a positive move to ease the current overload and bring up a brighter outlook here.

A captured corner of the domestic passenger terminal at the Da Nang airport

Da Nang Airport currently handles a combined total of about 326 aircraft takeoffs and landings a day, with up to 360 times during the peak. Last year, it catered to more than 98,700 flights carrying over 15.5 million passengers in total, exceeding its planned capacity set for 2020 by 2.5 million. Based these real facts, the aircraft apron expansion is essential, especially a growing travel demands by locals and visitors in the time ahead. 

Once fully operational, the new development will help increase the operating capacity of the airport, hereby meeting the growing demand here and increasing social and economic, tourism and investment activities in Da Nang and its neighbours in the Central Viet Nam and Central Highlands regions.

In particular, the lifting of a veil on this large-scale project is indeed in an active response to the recommendations by the Vietnamese Ministry of National Defence and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) on the environmental remediation of dioxin contamination at the airport.

Under the Prime Minister –approved project to make adjustments to the air transport development outline by 2020, with a vision to 2030, the Da Nang airport is expected to meet the “4E” standards of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and be able to welcome aircraft such as the Boeing B747, B777, and B787, and Airbus A320, A321, and A350.

Passengers checking in at a Da Nang airport-based Vietjet counter

Once the adjustments are completed, the Airports Corporation of Viet Nam (ACV) will carry out the construction of the third passenger terminal (T3), worth 5,000 billion VND, which will be able to handle between 10 and 15 million passengers per year, and a 300 billion VND cargo terminal which will be able to handle up to 100,000 tonnes of cargo per year.

Such much-awaited developments are expected to ensure the airport’s annual capacity of handling up to 30 million passengers and 200,000 tonnes of cargo, by 2030.

Also by 2030, focus will be on upgrading such facilities at the airport as taxiways, aprons, and passenger terminals, ensuring ground support equipment maintenance, flight management, fuel supplies, and targeting for the Category II (CAT II) and Category III (CAT III) Instrument Landing System (ILS) operations, and constructing other traffic infrastructure works.

There is no doubt that the ongoing drive on upgrading and expanding the airport is considered an encouraging step in perfecting the whole city’s transport system, hereby partly accelerating its socio-economic performance, especially the tourism industry.

Along with the airport upgrade, Da Nang government has been implementing specific plans, with a focus on opening more routes or increasing flights to the airport over the past time.

By THANH LAN- Translated by A.T