Long ThΓ nh International Airport, 40 kilometres east of Hα» ChΓ Minh City, was first sketched in the late 1990s, approved by the National Assembly in 2015 and finally broke ground in January 2021. Its first phase, one runway, one terminal and capacity for 25 million passengers a year, cost on the order of US$4.3 billion, was built almost entirely by the state airport operator ACV, and is opening in stages during 2026 after repeated deadlines slipped. The full project, planned at 100 million passengers, is meant to relieve a TΓ’n SΖ‘n NhαΊ₯t airport that has been over capacity for a decade. This is the story of why a country that needed the airport so badly took twenty years to build it, and what happens now that it exists.
Long ThΓ nh is the largest infrastructure project Vietnam has ever completed, and the delay in completing it is the most expensive planning failure in the country’s modern history. Hα» ChΓ Minh City’s TΓ’n SΖ‘n NhαΊ₯t airport was designed for 28 million passengers and handled more than 40 million by 2019, with aircraft queuing for take-off and passengers queuing for everything else. The replacement had been on the drawing board since the 1990s. That it took until 2021 to start digging, and until 2026 to open, is a case study in how Vietnamese megaprojects are decided, funded, delayed and, eventually, delivered. This article follows the airport from concept to opening. It is part of the Vietnam Company Stories hub.
Why did Long ThΓ nh take so long?
Because it required a National Assembly vote on a project of unprecedented cost, the clearance of 5,000 hectares and the resettlement of thousands of households, a decade of argument over whether to expand TΓ’n SΖ‘n NhαΊ₯t instead, and a financing model that depended on a state operator borrowing billions of dollars on its own balance sheet.
Who is building and paying for it?
Airports Corporation of Vietnam, the majority state-owned airport operator, is the investor for the terminal, runway and aprons, funding it from its own cash and a Vietcombank-led loan of about US$1.8 billion. The state paid for land clearance; the air traffic control company and private investors handle other components.
What changes when it opens?
Long-haul and most international flights are expected to shift from TΓ’n SΖ‘n NhαΊ₯t to Long ThΓ nh, which becomes Vietnam Airlines’ main international hub. TΓ’n SΖ‘n NhαΊ₯t keeps domestic and short-haul traffic. The airlines, the airport operators and the two cities involved are still arguing over exactly how that split works.
Why did Hα» ChΓ Minh City need a new airport in the first place?
Because TΓ’n SΖ‘n NhαΊ₯t is a wartime airfield surrounded by a city of ten million people, with two closely spaced runways that cannot be used independently, no room for a third and a terminal complex that was already at capacity by the early 2010s. Designed for around 28 million passengers, it handled more than 41 million in 2019 and has been the most congested airport in the country every year since.
The constraints are physical. The airport sits in TΓ’n BΓ¬nh district, five kilometres from the city centre, hemmed in by residential neighbourhoods, a golf course on military land and the Ministry of Defence, which controls a large part of the site. The parallel runways are less than 400 metres apart, so aircraft cannot land and take off simultaneously, which caps movements at a level far below what two runways would normally deliver. Taxiways, aprons and parking stands were added piecemeal, and for years the approach roads were so congested that the drive from the terminal to the city could take longer than a flight to HΓ Nα»i.
The state’s answer was to keep expanding TΓ’n SΖ‘n NhαΊ₯t while planning its successor. A domestic terminal was rebuilt, an international terminal opened in 2007, aprons were extended onto land released by the military, and in April 2025 a new Terminal 3 with capacity for 20 million domestic passengers, built by ACV at a cost of about VND 11 trillion, finally opened. Terminal 3 relieved the domestic crush but did nothing for the runway constraint, and it raised the airport’s nominal capacity to around 50 million passengers, which is roughly where demand already was.
The demand curve explains the urgency. Vietnamese air travel grew at double-digit rates for most of the 2010s, driven by the low-cost revolution described in the article on Vietjet’s rise, and the southern region generates the largest share of it. TΓ’n SΖ‘n NhαΊ₯t was, by the late 2010s, not just full but a constraint on the growth of the airlines, the tourism industry and the export economy that depends on air cargo. Every year the new airport did not exist had a measurable economic cost.
How did the airport spend twenty years in planning?
Through a sequence of studies, master plans and political arguments that each took years. A site at Long ThΓ nh in Δα»ng Nai province was identified in the late 1990s and formally selected in a 2005 prime ministerial decision. A master plan was approved in 2011, a pre-feasibility study went to the National Assembly in 2014 and was sent back, and the investment policy was finally approved by Resolution 94 in June 2015, with construction of phase one to begin in 2019 and finish in 2025.
The National Assembly debate in 2014 and 2015 was unusually open by Vietnamese standards. Deputies questioned the cost, then estimated at nearly US$19 billion for all three phases and about US$5.5 billion for phase one, at a time when public debt was approaching the legal ceiling. Others asked why TΓ’n SΖ‘n NhαΊ₯t could not be expanded onto the military golf course, a proposal with strong support in Hα» ChΓ Minh City, or why the existing BiΓͺn HΓ²a military airfield could not be converted. The Ministry of Transport argued that no expansion of the existing airport could deliver more than about 50 million passengers and that a new site was the only long-term answer. It won the vote, but the argument delayed the project by at least two years.
Land was the next obstacle. The site required about 5,000 hectares, most of it rubber plantations owned by a state company but also the homes of some 5,000 households, who had to be resettled to a new township at Lα»c AnβBΓ¬nh SΖ‘n. The National Assembly approved a separate VND 23 trillion land-clearance project in 2017, executed by Δα»ng Nai province, and the province took until 2021 to hand over the core area and until 2023 to complete it. Compensation disputes, slow disbursement and the pandemic all contributed, and for a period the airport project had funds but no site to build on.
The feasibility study for phase one was approved by the National Assembly in November 2019 and by the government in November 2020, and Prime Minister Nguyα» n XuΓ’n PhΓΊc broke ground on 5 January 2021. By then the 2025 completion target set in 2015 was already implausible, and the project had become a symbol of the state’s difficulty in delivering large infrastructure on time, a difficulty examined at greater length in the article on the NorthβSouth high-speed railway, a project of similar scale and similar planning history.
Who is paying for Long ThΓ nh, and how?
Mostly ACV, the Airports Corporation of Vietnam, which is 95 percent state-owned, operates 21 of the country’s 22 civil airports and was designated as the investor for the core of phase one, the terminal, runway, taxiways and aprons, at a cost of about VND 99 trillion or US$4.3 billion. ACV funds this from accumulated cash, which was substantial because it collects fees from every airport it runs, and from a syndicated loan of about VND 45 trillion, or US$1.8 billion, signed in 2023 with Vietcombank, VietinBank and BIDV.
The structure was a deliberate choice. Using ACV avoided the need for sovereign borrowing, which would have counted against the public-debt ceiling, and avoided foreign development loans, which come with procurement conditions and slow approvals. It also kept the airport in state hands. Proposals for foreign or private investors to build or operate the terminal, floated periodically since 2015, were rejected on the grounds that the country’s main international gateway should be operated by a state company. The three state-owned banks that lent to ACV were, in effect, lending to another arm of the same shareholder, which is how much of Vietnamese infrastructure is financed, as the article on Vietcombank and the state banking system explains.
Other components have other investors. The state budget paid for land clearance and resettlement. The air navigation company VATM built the control tower and air traffic systems. Fuel supply, cargo terminals and ground handling facilities were tendered to a mix of state and private companies, and the road and rail connections, an expressway widening, a new expressway from BiΓͺn HΓ²a to VΕ©ng TΓ u and a planned rail link to Thủ ThiΓͺm, are separate public projects with their own timetables, most of which are behind the airport itself.
The main construction contract, the VND 35 trillion passenger terminal, was awarded in August 2023 to the Vietur consortium led by IC Ictas of Turkey with ten Vietnamese contractors, after a first tender in 2022 failed to attract a compliant bid. The lotus-shaped terminal was designed by Heerim of Korea, and its steel roof and glass facade became the visual shorthand for the project in government photographs. The runway contract went to a Vietnamese consortium and was completed in 2025, ahead of the terminal, which had a 39-month schedule that the government repeatedly tried to compress.
Why did the 2025 deadline slip, and what did the government do about it?
Because the terminal contract was signed in late 2023 with a 39-month schedule that ran past the end of 2025, and because the road links, the fuel systems and a second runway added to phase one in 2024 all had their own delays. Prime Minister PhαΊ‘m Minh ChΓnh made the airport a personal priority, visited the site repeatedly, demanded basic completion by the end of 2025 and a commercial opening in the first half of 2026, and the project was moved onto a schedule of continuous shifts to meet it.
The political pressure was real and had effects. The runway was finished months early. A second runway, originally deferred to phase two, was approved for phase one in 2024 and built in parallel so that the airport would open with two rather than one. Contractors were publicly named when they fell behind, and the government used the airport as an example in its broader campaign against slow public investment disbursement, which had become a chronic problem across ministries and provinces.
The connecting infrastructure was the weaker link. The existing Hα» ChΓ Minh CityβLong ThΓ nhβDαΊ§u GiΓ’y expressway, opened in 2015 and already congested, needed widening from four lanes to eight, a project that was approved only in 2024 and was still under construction as the airport opened. The BiΓͺn HΓ²aβVΕ©ng TΓ u expressway, which passes the airport, was partly open in 2025. The rail link from Thủ ThiΓͺm in the city to the airport, and a light rail to Δα»ng Nai, existed as plans and feasibility studies. The result is an airport that opens with a road connection weaker than the planners intended, and a first cohort of passengers who will spend longer getting to Long ThΓ nh than they did getting to TΓ’n SΖ‘n NhαΊ₯t.
Opening in phases was the compromise. Technical flights and calibration were carried out from late 2025 and into 2026, airlines were allocated slots, and a commercial start in 2026 with a partial network was agreed while the rest of the terminal systems, the cargo terminal and the road works were finished. That is how large airports usually open, and it is a better outcome than either a rushed full opening or another year of delay.
How will traffic be split between Long ThΓ nh and TΓ’n SΖ‘n NhαΊ₯t?
The working plan is that Long ThΓ nh takes long-haul and most international flights, plus international-to-domestic connections, and becomes Vietnam Airlines’ main southern hub, while TΓ’n SΖ‘n NhαΊ₯t keeps domestic flights and some short-haul international services. The precise allocation, which determines the economics of every airline in the south, was still being negotiated between the Civil Aviation Authority, ACV and the carriers as the airport opened.
The airlines have conflicting interests. Vietnam Airlines, with its widebody fleet and long-haul network, wants Long ThΓ nh to be a true hub with domestic feed, which means moving a large share of domestic trunk flights there too. Vietjet, whose business is domestic and short-haul international, wants to stay at TΓ’n SΖ‘n NhαΊ₯t, close to the city and to the passengers who choose it on price, and has argued for an international-only Long ThΓ nh. Foreign carriers mostly want to be wherever their connecting traffic is. The regulator has to decide, and its decision will shift billions of dong of revenue between the two Vietnamese carriers, a rivalry described in the article on Vietnam Airlines and its state rescue.
The two-airport arrangement has been tried elsewhere with mixed results. Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Shanghai and Seoul each run a city airport and a distant international one, and each has struggled with the same questions of how to allocate traffic, how to connect the two and how to stop the older airport from remaining the preferred one. Where the split works, as in Seoul, it is because the new airport has a fast rail link and a clear international mandate. Where it is muddled, as in Kuala Lumpur, the older airport has lost traffic without the new one gaining a hub. Long ThΓ nh opens without the rail link, which puts it closer to the second case at the start.
The operator question is settled for now: ACV runs both airports. That avoids the destructive competition between two operators that some countries have suffered, but it also means there is no commercial pressure on ACV to make Long ThΓ nh attractive quickly. The regulator’s allocation decisions and the government’s political need for the new airport to succeed are the levers that will move traffic.
What does Long ThΓ nh mean for airlines, investors and the surrounding region?
For the airlines it means capacity after a decade without it. Slots at TΓ’n SΖ‘n NhαΊ₯t were the binding constraint on southern Vietnam’s aviation growth; Long ThΓ nh removes that constraint for international traffic and, by relieving pressure on the old airport, for domestic traffic too. Vietnam Airlines gets the hub it has wanted since the 1990s. Vietjet gets room to grow its international network even if it keeps its domestic base at TΓ’n SΖ‘n NhαΊ₯t. Foreign carriers that had been unable to get slots into Hα» ChΓ Minh City can enter or expand.
For ACV and its investors the airport is the largest single bet the company has made. ACV is listed on the UPCoM market with a minority public float, and its share price has tracked the project for a decade. The financial case rests on Long ThΓ nh reaching its 25 million passenger design capacity within a few years of opening and on aeronautical and retail charges that are still being set. ACV’s existing network is profitable enough to service the debt even in a slow ramp-up, which is why the banks lent, but the return on the new asset depends entirely on how quickly traffic moves.
For Δα»ng Nai and the wider south-east the airport is a regional development strategy. The province has planned an airport city around the site with logistics parks, industrial zones, housing and commercial development, on the model of Incheon or Kuala Lumpur’s Sepang. The land around Long ThΓ nh has been the object of speculation since 2015, with prices rising and falling on every announcement, and the province has had to intervene repeatedly against illegal subdivision. Whether the airport city materialises depends on the same connecting infrastructure that the airport itself is waiting for.
For the export economy Long ThΓ nh matters as a cargo gateway. TΓ’n SΖ‘n NhαΊ₯t’s cargo capacity was as constrained as its passenger terminals, and the electronics, garments and seafood that fly out of the south have been routed through congested facilities for years. Long ThΓ nh’s cargo terminal, planned at over a million tonnes a year in phase one, gives the industrial parks of Δα»ng Nai, BΓ¬nh DΖ°Ζ‘ng and Hα» ChΓ Minh City a modern air-freight base for the first time, which matters for the high-value electronics supply chains described in the piece on Samsung’s Vietnamese export machine.
What happens in phases two and three, and will they take another twenty years?
Phase two, planned for the 2030s, adds a third runway and a second terminal to reach 50 million passengers; phase three, planned toward 2050, takes the airport to four runways, four terminals and 100 million passengers, which would make it one of the largest in Asia. Each phase requires a new investment decision and a new financing plan, and none of that has been finalised.
The lessons of phase one should shorten the later phases. The land is cleared, the master plan is approved, the operator is in place and the construction capability, including the Vietnamese contractors that built the terminal alongside IC Ictas, now exists domestically. The political argument about whether the airport should exist is over. What remains is the argument about money, and specifically whether ACV can fund phase two on its own balance sheet, whether the state will allow private or foreign investors into later terminals, and whether the National Assembly will permit more borrowing against the public debt ceiling.
The traffic forecasts on which the phases rest are optimistic but not unreasonable. Vietnam’s airports handled around 110 million passengers in 2024, the southern region accounts for roughly 40 percent, and growth of 6 to 8 percent a year, below the pre-pandemic rate, would fill phase one by the early 2030s. The uncertainties are the ones that affect all Vietnamese aviation: the health of the two big carriers, the pace of Chinese tourist recovery, the price of fuel and the competitive position of Bangkok, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur as regional hubs.
The airport that opens in 2026 is, in the end, a partial answer to a problem the country identified in 1997. It solves the runway constraint that made TΓ’n SΖ‘n NhαΊ₯t the region’s most frustrating airport, it gives the flag carrier a hub and the low-cost carriers room, and it creates a new development pole east of the city. It does not yet have the rail link, the road capacity or the settled operating model that would make it the airport its planners described. Those will take more years, and the pattern of the past two decades suggests they will take longer than promised.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Long ThΓ nh airport and when does it open?
Long ThΓ nh International Airport is in Long ThΓ nh district, Δα»ng Nai province, about 40 kilometres east of central Hα» ChΓ Minh City. Phase one, with two runways, one terminal and capacity for 25 million passengers, was built from 2021 and is opening in stages during 2026 after the original 2025 target slipped.
How much does Long ThΓ nh airport cost?
Phase one is budgeted at about VND 99 trillion, or roughly US$4.3 billion, excluding the separate VND 23 trillion land-clearance project paid from the state budget. The full three-phase project to 100 million passengers was estimated at around US$16 to 19 billion when approved in 2015, a figure that will be revised at each phase.
Who owns and operates Long ThΓ nh airport?
Airports Corporation of Vietnam, a 95 percent state-owned company listed on UPCoM, is the investor and operator of the terminal, runway and aprons, and also operates TΓ’n SΖ‘n NhαΊ₯t. Air navigation is handled by the state company VATM, and various cargo, fuel and ground-handling facilities have separate state and private investors.
Will TΓ’n SΖ‘n NhαΊ₯t close when Long ThΓ nh opens?
No. TΓ’n SΖ‘n NhαΊ₯t, which opened a new domestic Terminal 3 in 2025, will continue to handle domestic and some short-haul international flights. The plan is for Long ThΓ nh to take long-haul and most international services, though the exact division of traffic between the two airports was still being negotiated with the airlines as Long ThΓ nh opened.
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