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Airports struggle to look for passengers
Big investment rate and low efficiency--both have the central region’s airports to seek to increase the number of passengers and stabilize flights. However, no feasible solution has been found so far.
The Dong Hoi airport in Quang Binh province has been developing the air route to HCM City with A320’s and to Hanoi with ATR72’s. Meanwhile, with overly high expenses, the airport incurs the loss of 55-60 billion dong a year.
The airport’s board of management well understands that in order to make profit, it needs to put big aircrafts into operation. However, the investment is really unfeasible, because the demand for traveling by air is not big in Quang Binh. Meanwhile, the technical infrastructure of the airport remains very week and there is no money to upgrade.
In fact, this is also the same situation of other airports in the central region.
The ambitious plans
Tran Van Trien, Director of Phu Cat airport in Binh Dinh province, said that the airport strives to increase the number of passengers going through the airport from 220,000 in 2011 to 280,000 in 2012. However, Trien said it is unclear if the goal is attainable.
“Only if Binh Dinh opens more tourism sites, develops more key economic zones, and if Vietnam Airlines increases the number of daily flights from and to Phu Cat airport, will our plan be able to come true,” Trien said.
He hopes that after Phu Cat installs the equipments that guide flights at night, estimated to cost 30 billion dong, Vietnam Airlines would increase the number of night flights.
In Phu Yen province, 290 dong has been spent to expand and upgrade the Tuy Hoa airport. Nguyen Nguyen Hung, General Director of the Southern Airports Corporation, said that the project aims to increase the capacity of the airport from 60,000 passengers per annum to 555,000 passengers by 2013.
Hung said that the goal has been set up after considering the overall development plan of the Phu Yen province by 2020. By that time, the province hopes to become a big tourism center in Vietnam and the region, which means that there would be more passengers for the Tuy Hoa airport.
However, analysts have commented that this is a far away development plan. Therefore, it is still very difficult to seek passengers nowadays.
Struggling to reduce loss
Dinh Tan Phuoc, Director of the Chu Lai international airport in Quang Nam province, said that it will take time to gradually escape from loss and seek stable passenger sources.
In the immediate time, the airport would focus on upgrading land services in order to make it capable to serve big aircraft, such as Boeing and Airbus; thus allowing to attract more passengers. Besides, Phuoc plans to develop non-aviation business to ease the burden on aviation activities.
Also according to Phuoc, in November 2011, the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam CAAV sent a dispatch to the Quang Ninh provincial authorities, requesting to lease land to Chu Lai airport, so that the airport can organize production and improve the living standards of its staff.
Pham Van Thanh, Deputy General Director of the Central Region’s Airports Corporation, said that the existence of many unprofitable airports in the central region, in the eyes of many people, is a big waste. However, Thanh said that the airports are very important to the socio-economic development in the localities.
The Thua Thien-Hue authorities have announced that the province needs 12 trillion dong to upgrade the Phu Bai airport following the Prime Minister’s decision to develop the airport by 2020. However, over the last three years, since the day the airport was approved to become an international airport, no considerable capital has been invested in the airport.
vietnamnet
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