A panel formed to seek solutions for the overloaded Tan Son Nhat International Airport has made up its mind on a final proposal to submit to the government, after five meetings with three options up for debate.

The team, led by the Ministry of Transport under supervision of Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung, announced after the fifth round of meeting on Friday that the last of the three options has been chosen.

Tan Son Nhat is currently the country’s busiest airport, and the transport ministry and the aviation watchdog had repeatedly been urged to find feasible expansion plan for the Ho Chi Minh City airdrome.

The selected proposition suggests building more taxiways, which will link the two runways and connect them with the apron areas, and improving the existing runway in the northern side of the airport.

The plan also includes constructions of a mixed-use terminal T3, capable of serving 10 million passengers a year, and a passenger terminal T4 with the same capacity.

These facilities will be built on a military-owned land plot, which the defense ministry has promised to transfer the using right to its transport counterpart.

This proposed plan costs about VND19.7 trillion (US$879.46 million) and takes no more than three years for completion.

Once finished, the plan will expand Tan Son Nhat capacity to 43 million or 45 million passengers a year, compared to the current 25 million.

Deputy PM Dung has decided on this proposal, requesting relevant agencies to prepare a complete proposition to officially submit to Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc for feedback by February 25.

Tired passengers wait to board their flights at Tan Son Nhat on January 15, 2017.

The unselected proposals

The third option is selected as it is less time- and money-consuming than the two other ones.

The first proposal suggests building brand new runways, taxiways, airport aprons, terminals and other auxiliary facilities on a land plot now functioning as golf course north of the airport. The nearby neighborhood has to be cleared, and residents relocated, to serve the project.

This option helps expand the airport capacity to 60 million passengers a year, but it takes between ten and 15 years to complete and a massive cost of VND201.35 trillion ($9 billion), given the relocation of 140,000 houses.

The second proposal, in the meantime, is similar to the third one except for suggestions to build one more taxiway and airport apron. Consequently, the estimated cost is bigger, VND61 trillion ($2.72 billion), and construction also takes much longer, eight to ten years.

Despite a design capacity of 25 million passengers, Tan Son Nhat served as many as 32 million last year.

The airport is extremely overloaded these days, when people fly home for Tet celebration and the arrival hall is also packed with people waiting to see their beloved Viet kieu, or overseas Vietnamese, home.

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