Hanoi opens terminal

HANOI  A USD645-million passenger terminal at Hanoi’s Noi Bai International Airport is due to open 25 December after three years of construction.
The terminal project management board head, Do Tat Binh, told local media that 99% of the construction has been completed and that the contractor has met both the progress and quality targets assigned to the project.
Construction o the four-story Terminal 2, the largest in Vietnam, started in December 2011 and cost USD645.35 million to complete.
Of that investment, a USD504.27 million loan was sourced from Japanese official development assistance (ODA) and the balance raised locally.
inside no 1The terminal is 996 metres long and has a total gross floor area of over 139,000 square metres. It will be able to serve 10 to 15 million passengers a year.
On 25 December, the Vietnamese national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines will be the first airline use the terminal; Flight VN661 will depart for Singapore.
All international flights will move to the new terminal by 31 December.
There will be 48 check-in counters with a capacity to open another 12 counters as traffic grows. The facility has double the capacity of Terminal 1.
A bus shuttle commutes in 10 minutes between the two terminals.
There are also plans in place to build two more terminals; T3 and T4 to eventually increase capacity of Noi Bai Airport to 50 million passengers per year.
Present facilities are heavily congested as passenger traffic has surpassed the 9 million ceiling to reach 15.2 million passengers in 2013.

sourced:ttrweekly.com