Grassland areas surrounding the runway of an airport able to serve local and international flights in northwestern Vietnam have long become places for local residents to graze cattle without any interference by security staff.   The facility, Dien Bien Phu Airport, is the largest in the northwestern region and located adjacent to the Muong Thanh field in Dien Bien Phu City, the capital of Dien Bien Province. There is a small trench line to separate the airport and the outside areas, but it is often dry and unable to prevent any intrusion by people or cattle that can spoil the runway area.  No fence is in use to divide the runway from residential areas around it so locals have taken advantage of the large green grassland there as a rich pasture for their cattle, including cows and buffaloes. As a routine practice, after driving cattle from their residence through the runway into the grassland, cattle raisers can stand, sit or even lie down on the airstrip. At 5:00 pm on April 4, Tuoi Tre reporters saw many local dwellers walking in groups in the runway area. Meanwhile, dozens of cattle were freely wandering and eating grass nearby.  No security officers or guards were on duty to prevent the people and cattle from entering the runway or at least request them to leave. As a result, cows and buffaloes could leirsurly trample upon and defecate anywhere on the landing strip and the grassland, causing a foul-smelling mess.  When asked by Tuoi Tre about her tending cattle at the airport, an old woman of the Thai ethnic minority group answered, “We know clearly about the flight schedules so we take our cattle to the green only when there are no planes landing or taking off.” In reality there is no partition between residential areas and the airport so cattle can trespass on the runway at any time, some locals said. In addition, many flights can change their schedules due to weather reasons, and in such cases, it is hard to know exactly the takeoff or landing times of airplanes at the airport, the locals said. Built in the period of French domination before 1954 as a makeshift airport, the facility has been recently upgraded and it now serves four flights per day. The airport has four locations for aircraft to park on an area of 7,500 square meters. The airport runway is 1,830 meters long and 30 meters wide, and its passenger terminal covers 2,500 square meters.

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