HÀ NỘI — To keep the Long Thành International Airport project on schedule, the Government has established an inter-disciplinary working team of officials from the transport and construction ministries and a deputy minister of transport will visit the construction site weekly to push the pace of the project.

These new measures were announced at a meeting held on Tuesday chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Lê Văn Thành, who is also head of the project's steering committee.

Thành said the steering committee will convene every month to review the progress of the project.

Minister of Transport Nguyễn Văn Thể said the project was on the right track and must not be delayed any further so that it can go into trial operation in early 2025.

The deputy prime minister also ordered Đồng Nai’s People’s Committee to complete land clearance and asked the authorities to build road and railway systems connecting the airport with localities.

At the next meeting, the transport ministry must report the results of a survey on the road from the airport to HCM City.

He also asked members of the Steering Committee to visit the site regularly and push the progress of the project, to make sure it is implemented in accordance with the report.

Despite having some positive progress since the site check on April 27 this year, ground levelling work hasn’t been up to expectations, the deputy prime minister said.

Transport minister Thể said ground levelling is an important task of the project and will affect other tasks if it is not completed, noting that it must be finished by July next year.

He added that a deputy minister has been assigned to the construction site to examine and accelerate the progress.

Covering more than 5,580 hectares, the Long Thành International Airport will spread across six communes in Long Thành District. Its construction has been divided into three phases. 

In the first phase, a runway and one passenger terminal, along with other supporting facilities, will be built to serve 25 million passengers and 1.2 million tonnes of cargo each year. This phase is scheduled to be completed in 2025.

The project started in 2021. Once fully completed in 2050, the airport will be able to handle 100 million passengers and 5 million tonnes of cargo annually.

Located 40km to the east of HCM City, the airport is expected to relieve overloading at the southern metropolis’s Tân Sơn Nhất International Airport, which is currently the largest in Việt Nam. VNS