Foreign investors eye Cam Ranh airport development

07 Aug 2011 2042 | World Travel News

Khanh Hoa Province’s official info portal said representatives of a venture involving Airis International proposed a plan to develop a terminal for low-cost carriers in Cam Ranh Airport and auxiliary facilities at their meeting with the province’s chairman Nguyen Chien Thang last week.

The plan suggested by the venture also includes development of a wind or solar energy plant to supply electricity for operations of the terminal and nearby facilities in the international airport of Khanh Hoa.

Thang said Khanh Hoa would support the venture’s investment proposal and help it with procedures and work with relevant agencies, including the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam (CAAV) over the plan, whose investment capital has not been disclosed.

CAAV told the Daily on the phone that the agency had not received any detailed plan from the venture but confirmed the interest of some foreign investors in developing some airports in central and Central Highlands regions of Vietnam.

According to CAAV, Vietnam does not have any separate terminal for budget airlines though the country has Jetstar Pacific operating under a low-cost business model. Foreign budget carriers including Tiger Airways, Jetstar Asia and AirAsia currently enplane and disembark their passengers at Tan Son Nhat and Noi Bai – the country’s two biggest international airports that also serve full-serviced airlines.

As for the power plant, the Khanh Hoa chairman told the venture to collaborate with local agencies in identifying location and generation capacity of this investment component as well as electricity consumption.

Middle Airports Corp. as the watchdog overseeing all airports in the central region said Cam Ranh was the country’s fourth largest airports in Vietnam after Tan Son Nhat, Noi Bai and Da Nang airports in terms of passengers. Located 35 kilometers from Nha Trang City, the airport registered annual double-digit growth over the past years.

In December 2009, the corporation put into use a new two-storey, VND200-billion terminal with two air-bridges at Cam Ranh Airport to improve its passenger handling capacity to 800 passengers for a peak hour.

A master development plan envisages Cam Ranh Airport will be able to receive Airbus A320s, A321s and A300-600s, Boeing B767, B777 and B747 on its two runways until 2020. The second 3.048-meter-long, 45-meter-wide runway to be built later will enable the airport to handle 5.5 million passengers and 100,000 tons of cargo a year by 2020.

The airport will be expanded to receive eight million passengers and 200,000 tons of cargo a year as well as have a parking area for some 36 aircraft of different types by 2030.

Cam Ranh Airport requires more than VND10.5 trillion for expansion until 2030 and this investment capital will come from different sources in accordance with the development plan, which has been approved by the Prime Minister.

Earlier this year, the U.S. group ADC & HAS met with authorities of Khanh Hoa Province and Middle Airports Corp. to look for the opportunity to invest in Cam Ranh and other airports in central Vietnam under the public-private partnership format.

As there has not been any regularly scheduled service to Cam Ranh Airport, nearly 191,000 international travelers had to come to the province via chartered flights as well as by train and car after arriving at Tan Son Nhat and Noi Bai airports in the first half of this year. The Khanh Hoa Department of Culture, Sport and Tourism estimated this year’s total number to reach 450,000.