Long Thanh International Airport: What Travelers Need to Know Before It Opens

1. Long Thanh International Airport at a Glance

Long Thanh International Airport (LTIA) is Vietnam’s answer to a problem that’s been obvious to anyone flying through Ho Chi Minh City for the past decade: Tan Son Nhat is landlocked, boxed in by the city that grew up around it, and long past comfortable capacity. Long Thanh is being built from scratch on roughly 5,000 hectares of land in Long Thanh District, 📍Map in Dong Nai Province, about 40 km east of the city center, to give southern Vietnam a hub that can actually grow.

The short version of where things stand: it is not open for commercial flights as of July 2026. Construction has progressed a long way — the first runway is finished, a technical opening ceremony took place in December 2025, and the terminal building is in its final stages — but no airline is selling tickets in or out of Long Thanh yet. Every flight to and from Ho Chi Minh City today still uses Tan Son Nhat (SGN), full stop.

That single fact is the reason this guide exists. If you’re planning a Vietnam trip any time before this airport’s commercial debut, the practical impact on you is close to zero — you’ll fly the same airport you always would have. But the transition is coming, it will happen in stages rather than overnight, and it’s worth understanding now so you’re not caught off guard when route reassignments start appearing on booking sites.

2. Current Status: Not Yet Open for Commercial Flights

Why the caution? Vietnam’s mega-infrastructure projects have a track record of shifting completion windows, and Long Thanh is no exception — the original informal target moved from mid-2026 to an official “Q4 2026” only a few months before this guide was written. Fifteen major construction packages make up the terminal complex; as of the last confirmed progress report, three were complete and twelve were running in parallel, with about 15,000 workers and 3,000-plus pieces of equipment on site. That’s a lot of moving parts, and any one of them slipping pushes the whole opening back. We’ll update this section the moment commercial operations are confirmed to have started.

3. Location and Distance: How It Compares to Tan Son Nhat

Long Thanh sits in Long Thanh District, Dong Nai Province — a separate province from Ho Chi Minh City, not one that was absorbed into the city during Vietnam’s 2025 provincial mergers (the areas that were folded into HCMC were the former Binh Duong and Ba Ria-Vung Tau). It’s commonly cited as about 40 km east of the city center in a straight line, though because of how the road network curves around, actual driving distance runs closer to 50-60 km depending on which route you take — sources aren’t fully consistent on this, so treat “about 40 km, more like 50-60 km by road” as the honest range rather than a fixed number.

Here’s how the two airports stack up on paper. Tan Son Nhat remains the airport every current traveler is using; Long Thanh is the one being built to eventually take the pressure off it. 📍Map

The upshot: these are not interchangeable airports, and they won’t be within easy walking or short-taxi distance of each other once both are active. If you ever need to connect between them — say, arriving internationally at one and departing domestically from the other — budget serious time for the transfer, because it will not be a quick hop.

4. Scale and Design: Lotus Roofs, Bamboo, and a 4F Rating

Long Thanh is being built at a scale meant to last decades, not years. The full site covers roughly 5,000 hectares (about 50 km²), making it one of the largest single infrastructure footprints in the country. At completion — meaning after all three construction phases — the airport will have four runways, each 4,000 meters long and 60 meters wide, enough to handle the largest wide-body aircraft flying today.

The design leans hard into national identity. The terminal roof is shaped to evoke a lotus flower, Vietnam’s national flower, and incorporates natural ventilation and water-saving systems rather than relying purely on mechanical climate control. Structurally, the project also includes a bamboo structure intended to be one of the largest of its kind in the world — a deliberate pairing of a culturally symbolic material with a sustainability angle, rather than just a decorative touch.

Technically, Long Thanh is rated ICAO Code 4F, the highest airport classification in the ICAO system, which covers aircraft with wingspans and undercarriage widths up to and including the largest commercial jets in service. In plain terms: whatever aircraft an airline wants to fly here, the runway and taxiway geometry won’t be the limiting factor.

5. Passenger and Cargo Capacity: The Phased Build-Out

One detail that’s easy to get wrong: the airport’s headline capacity numbers describe a design ceiling, not what it will actually handle on day one. Long Thanh is being built in stages, and each stage has a very different real-world number attached to it.

The gap between “opening-day throughput” and “phase-1 design capacity” is deliberate — airports rarely run at full design load from the first day, and Long Thanh’s own planners have been explicit that the early numbers will look modest next to the 25-million ceiling. Don’t read early passenger figures as a sign the airport is underperforming; it’s following its own ramp-up schedule.

6. Who’s Paying for It: Investment and Ownership

The project is led by ACV — the Airports Corporation of Vietnam (Tổng công ty Cảng hàng không Việt Nam), the state-linked operator that runs Vietnam’s major airports — acting as both the primary investor and the eventual operator. Money-wise, this is one of Vietnam’s largest-ever infrastructure undertakings, and it’s split across component projects rather than funded as one lump sum.

The project is structured in three broad phases, of which phase 1 (the one nearing completion now) is the smallest by scope but still represents billions of dollars in committed spending. Phases 2 and 3 — which would eventually bring the airport to its four-runway, 100-million-passenger final form — are further out and less firmly scheduled; expect those milestones to be measured in decades, not years, matching the 2050 target horizon mentioned in the JICA-backed masterplan.

7. Which Airlines and Routes Are Moving

Once Long Thanh is commercially operating, the government’s roadmap calls for a fairly clear division of labor: Long Thanh is meant to eventually handle about 80% of international flights and roughly 10% of domestic flights out of the Ho Chi Minh City area, while Tan Son Nhat keeps around 20% of international traffic and the bulk — about 90% — of domestic flights. The priority in the first wave, expected around summer 2026 onward, is long-haul international routes to Europe, the Americas, and Oceania — the flights that benefit most from more modern, spacious terminal infrastructure.

Vietnam Airlines has floated moving roughly 12% of its international routes over to Long Thanh, and Vietjet has committed to operating at least two international routes there once phase 1 opens. Neither carrier is planning a wholesale switch on day one — this is explicitly a gradual, route-by-route migration, timed to how fast supporting infrastructure (ground transport especially) catches up.

Worth flagging: some older sources, mostly published before 2025, floated a more aggressive long-term scenario where essentially all Ho Chi Minh City international flights eventually end up at Long Thanh. The current, more specific 2026 government roadmap is the 80%/gradual version above — treat the “everything eventually moves” idea as a distant, less certain long-term possibility rather than the confirmed plan.

8. Getting There by Road from Ho Chi Minh City

Road access is where most of the near-term infrastructure work is happening, since rail is still years away (more on that below). Three highway projects do the heavy lifting:

There’s also a supporting pair of roads — 25B and 25C — that will connect Ring Road 3 to National Route 51, which Dong Nai Province is currently finishing up. Put it all together and the overall goal is a normal drive time from central Ho Chi Minh City to the airport of about 1 to 1.5 hours once everything above is complete.

9. Public Bus Plans

Ho Chi Minh City’s transport department has finalized a network plan built around 13 new high-quality bus routes to connect the city to Long Thanh. The rollout isn’t happening all at once — phase 1, targeted from the third quarter of 2026, adjusts four existing routes and adds two new express services:

• An express route linking Saigon Bus Terminal directly to Long Thanh
• An express route linking Tan Son Nhat Airport directly to Long Thanh

Inside the airport itself, planners have proposed five bus stop locations, though exact positions are still subject to change as construction wraps up. If you don’t want to rely on a car — whether that’s your own arranged transfer or a Grab booking once ride-hailing service is confirmed at the new terminal — these two express routes are the most concrete public-transport option on the table right now, and they’re specifically designed to bridge the two airports for travelers who need to move between them.

10. Future Rail Connections (Not Yet Under Construction)

Rail access to Long Thanh exists only on paper right now. A Thu Thiem-to-Long Thanh rail line has been proposed, and an extension of the Ho Chi Minh City metro system toward the airport is under review — but neither has broken ground.

This is fairly typical for large airport projects worldwide — road access almost always comes first, with rail following years, sometimes a decade or more, later. If a firm rail construction start is announced, that will be a meaningfully bigger signal that Long Thanh’s supporting infrastructure is maturing than any single flight or terminal milestone.

11. Tan Son Nhat vs. Long Thanh: How Not to Get Confused

The single most important practical point in this entire guide: as of today, there is no such thing as a flight departing from or arriving at Long Thanh. If a booking site, travel agent, or itinerary mentions Long Thanh as your departure or arrival airport before commercial operations are confirmed to have started, treat that as an error and double-check directly with the airline.

Once the transition does begin, the confusion risk shifts to a different problem: knowing which airport a given flight uses, especially for connections. Airlines will migrate routes gradually rather than switching everything at once, so for a stretch of time some international flights out of Ho Chi Minh City will use Long Thanh while others — plus essentially all domestic flights — will still use Tan Son Nhat. If your itinerary involves connecting between an international and a domestic leg, that’s exactly the kind of trip where you’ll want to verify both flights’ airports individually rather than assuming they match.

12. The Overlooked Upside: Vung Tau and the Coast

Long Thanh’s location is usually framed as a downside for anyone headed into central Ho Chi Minh City — and it is, compared to Tan Son Nhat’s extremely central position just 6-8 km from District 1, where a Grab ride currently runs roughly US$4-9.50 (110,000-250,000 VND). Long Thanh, at 40+ km out, is unambiguously farther from the city core, and nothing about that changes once it opens.

But geography cuts both ways. Long Thanh District sits closer to the direction of Vung Tau — the former Ba Ria-Vung Tau area, now a special zone under Ho Chi Minh City — than Tan Son Nhat does. For travelers heading straight to Vung Tau’s beaches rather than into the city itself, Long Thanh could end up shaving real time off the trip once its connecting roads are finished, precisely because it skips the drive all the way into central HCMC first.

The honest way to think about it: Long Thanh trades proximity to the city center for proximity to the coast in that direction. If your trip is built entirely around downtown Ho Chi Minh City, that’s a net negative versus Tan Son Nhat. If it’s built around the coast east of the city, it could be a genuine convenience — just don’t expect it to beat Tan Son Nhat’s remarkable closeness to District 1 on any route that runs through downtown first. For more on how the region’s cities and beach towns fit together, see our South Vietnam travel guide.

13. What Travelers Should Actually Do Right Now

Given that nothing about Long Thanh affects a trip booked today, the actual to-do list is short:

• Check your airport code, not just the city name. Every current Ho Chi Minh City flight uses Tan Son Nhat (SGN). Once transfers begin, that will stop being automatic — get in the habit of checking now so it’s second nature later.
• Handle your paperwork as normal. Nothing about Long Thanh changes entry requirements — sort your Vietnam visa the same way you always would.
• Arrange connectivity and cash the usual way. Pick up a Vietnam eSIM before you land
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  , and handle currency exchange through your normal channels — see our guide to money and currency in Vietnam for the current rate (roughly 1 USD ≈ 26,300 VND as of mid-2026) and where to change it.

• If you’re renting a car or arranging a private transfer for onward travel around southern Vietnam, book that the same way you would today

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  — Long Thanh’s opening won’t change how ground transport booking works elsewhere in the region.

• Bookmark this page. We’ll rewrite this guide’s status section the moment commercial operations at Long Thanh are confirmed, with real fares, real transfer times, and real terminal details to replace today’s targets and plans.

14. Quick FAQ Recap

A few of the most common questions about Long Thanh, answered in short form below — useful if you’re skimming before a booking, or explaining the situation to a travel companion.

Frequently Asked Questions

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