Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV) has confirmed it has signed up a two-party consortium led by Korea’s Incheon Airport to implement operations management at Long Thanh International Airport. The construction site is approximately 25 miles east of Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) in the south of Vietnam.

The invitation to bid for “consultancy services for the management and operation” of the airport went out on June 10 and the deadline was July 11. As the winner, the three main tasks for Incheon will be to:

* Establish concepts of operation (ConOps) and assist in establishing procedures

* Come up with a commercial and financial strategy

* Implement ConOps trials and operational transfer.

The construction of Long Thanh International Airport is a crucial national project as it will replace the existing capacity-constrained Tan Son Nhat International Airport. Ho Chi Minh City has a population of nearly 10 million, but growing, and international tourist traffic is also rising fast.

Long Thanh International Airport is expected to reach level 4F as classified by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the government has ambitions for it to become a regional aviation transit hub in a competitive regional market.

When the first three phases are completed, the gateway will have a capacity of 100 million passengers per year. In the immediate future, Phase 1 will see the building of one runway and a passenger terminal able to handle 25 million passengers annually, plus a cargo terminal with capacity for 1.2 million tons of cargo per year.

September 2026 Target

The passenger terminal construction was started at the end of August last year and is expected to be completed and put into operation in September 2026. ACV has indicated that it wants to implement the most modern technology at the new airport. The corporation has cited elements like biometrics, artificial intelligence (AI), and environmental action to reduce CO2 emissions.

To prepare for this scale and complexity while optimizing resources, ACV will coordinate with Incheon Airport Consortium (IAC) over a contract period of 24 months. IAC consists of two parties: Incheon International Airport Corporation (IIAC) and PMI Consulting Services, a Vietnamese joint stock company.

IIAC which operates Seoul’s Incheon Airport, one of the busiest in the world, is also a leading consulting firm in airport management and ops with decades of experience in implementing world-class airport and passenger terminal projects. PMI Consulting Services is a major construction consulting firm in Vietnam with over a decade of experience in aviation projects.

Vietnam’s ACV expects Long Thanh to be put into operation with high efficiency and that the consortium will “make an important contribution to building and enhancing the competitiveness of Long Thanh International Airport in the region.” It added in a statement that it wanted to “create a new look” for the aviation industry in particular, as well as “concretizing” the vision of the gateway as an international transit airport “on par with major centers in the ASEAN region.”

With the selection of a consulting contractor concluded, ACV added that it is now “committed” to implementing plans to put Long Thanh International Airport into operation on time.