A number of professors, doctors and former aviation officials have proposed that the planned Long Thanh International Airport in Dong Nai Province should not be built, since the project is costly and unnecessary.

>> Long Thanh airport best option for aviation overload: ministry>> PM asks ministry to mull proposal not to build airport >> Long Thanh airport to cost up to $5.6 billion They shared this view when they gathered at the home of Le Trong Sanh, former head of the management department at  Ho Chi Minh City's Tan Son Nhat Airport, to discuss the issue after the Transport Minsitry maintained that the new airport project is the best option to solve potential overload at Tan Son Nhat in the near future. The ministry made the statement after Sanh and Mai Trong Tuan, a former pilot of Flight Crew Division 919, earlier this month sent a proposal to Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung asking for a halt on the planned airport, which will cost about U$$7.81 billion, according to the Transport Ministry’s calculation. The ministry said the proposal was not new, and it has been analyzed and clarified in a relevant report prepared by the Japan Airport Consultants Inc. (JAC), the project’s consultant.  Besides the project for a new airport, the Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV), the project’s investor, has asked JAC to prepare two other projects for consideration and selection. One of them involves expanding Tan Son Nhat, and the other details the upgrading of Bien Hoa’s military airport (in Dong Nai). Accordingly, JAC said, an expansion of Tan Son Nhat to make it equivalent to the planned airport in Long Thanh will cost as much as $25.2 billion and require the relocation of 140,000 people, the report said. Meanwhile, upgrading the Bien Hoa airport would cost $12.1 billion, and a new air base would need to be set up. Therefore, of the three projects, the Long Thanh International Airport Project is the best, as it will cost only $7.81 billion and requires the relocation of just 1,500 households, ACV said.In 40-50 years later, not now Meanwhile, at the gathering yesterday morning, Associate Prof. Dr Nguyen Thien Tong,  former chairman of the aviation engineering department of the HCMC University of Technology, said that people should think of building  the Long Thanh airport in 40 or 50 years, not now. He favors the proposal not to build a new airport by Sanh and Tuan. Tong rejected the ministry’s argument that an expansion of Tan Son Nhat will cost as much as $25.2 billion. Besides Tan Son Nhat, there are four other international airports from spread from South Central Vietnam to Southeastern Vietnam to meet air travel demand, including Cam Ranh in Nha Trang, Lien Khuong in Da Lat, Tra Noc in Can Tho and Phu Quoc in Kien Giang, Tong said. Therefore, it is not necessary to expand Tan Son Nhat to make it equivalent to Long Thanh, instead upgrades are only needed for its terminals and aircraft parking areas. “Recently there have been many projects, including one to build a sea port, worth thousands of billions of dong (VND1 trillion = $48 million), but when the port was completed, no cargo ships came,” Tong said.

Therefore, the Transport Ministry should revise the airport project so as not to repeat this mistake, the scientist advised. “In 40-50 years, if Tan Son Nhat is suffering an overload, then we can think of Long Thanh. For the time being, it is unadvisable to invest in the planned airport, since there is no a real demand while its cost is very high,” Tong concluded.Reasons to say “No” Meanwhile, Sanh and Tuan maintained that building Long Thanh airport is unpractical and unnecessary. Instead of investing $7.8 billion in the new project on 5,000 ha, only $1 billion is needed to upgrade Tan Son Nhat to meet the increasing demand for air travel, they said. It is also unadvisable to build a costly new airport while the country’s economy is facing many difficulties, the proposers said. Currently, Tan Son Nhat can serve 600 flights per day, with a landin every two minutes. If managed well, the airport can serve 35 million passengers per year, not the 25 million said by the Transport Ministry, Sanh said. In addition, Bien Hoa military airport, not far from Tan Son Nhat, can be also reformed to support Tan Son Nhat in passenger transport. In talking with Tuoi Tre, both Sanh and Tuan said Tan Son Nhat has long been a well-known name of historical value for both local and foreign passengers. Therefore, the airport’s operation should be maintained. It would be a mistake to build a new airport and turn Tan Son Nhat into a domestic terminal, since the location of the new airport would be inconvenient for transit passengers as well as transit goods, the proposers said.

“There will be no international passengers who will want to arrive at an airport in Long Thanh and then take a road trip to HCMC to take domestic flights,” Tuan said.

Meanwhile, the expansion of the current airport to the north, where a golf course is expected to be built, is totally feasible, they added. “Although the project has been approved it has yet to be passed by the National Assembly, which expects to discuss this issue in October. I will continue sending my proposal to many NA deputies soon,” Sanh said.