A section of the expanded international terminal at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City was on Wednesday put into operation with added services to improve passengers’ experience.

The new section is a three-story wing of the expanded international terminal, lying east of the old T2 terminal, with a total area of 8,780 square meters.

The newly-opened wing added seven additional boarding gates to the airport, three of which are installed with jet bridges while the remaining four use shuttle buses to take passengers to their planes.

A 100-square-meter sleeping area featuring 20 couches and a 40-square-meter children’s playground operated by the Southern Airports Services JSC (SASCO) are also available to passengers, free-of-charge, in the new wing.

The expanded terminal is also equipped with ten mini bedrooms, each measuring approximately four square meters, for passengers for an additional fee.

‘Fresh to go’ convenient stores in the wing offer affordable items starting at VND20,000 (US$0.9).

The inauguration of the new section is expected to reduce the load on the existing terminal at Tan Son Nhat International Airport, long infamous for being constantly overloaded.

During this year’s travel peak in July, Tan Son Nhat airport handled an average of 680 arrivals and departures each day.

A total of 107,906 flights carrying over 16 million passengers arrived at or departed from Tan Son Nhat in the first half of 2016, an increase of 21.93 percent and 25.37 percent, respectively, from the same period in 2015.

The airport is expected to welcome over 32 million passengers in 2016, far surpassing its planned capacity of 25 million passengers by 2020.

The children’s playground inside the expanded international terminal at Tan Son Nhat International Airport inaugurated on October 26, 2016. Photo: Tuoi Tre

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