Tan Son Nhat airport launches bus service in domestic terminal

As agreed by the Public Transport Management Center under Ho Chi Minh City’s Department of Transport and Tan Son Nhat International Airport, two bus routes, 152 and 72-1, have been launched at the airport’s domestic terminal on Tuesday.

The two bus lines have already run through the international terminal.

They are put into service following the congestion and chaos outside the domestic terminal at the end of the Lunar New Year holidays in early February when people returned to the city en masse, according to the Transport Department.

Many passengers had to wait for hours for taxis, both traditional and app-based, blocking traffic.

For the upcoming holiday in late April, it is expected that the airport would receive 42,000 passengers per day on average.

April 30 is Reunification Day and May 1, International Labor Day, both falling on a weekend this year, which means a four-day break.

As the airport calculated, if the volume rises to more than 60,000 passengers per day, there would be a shortage of 1,100 taxi services, either traditional or app-based.

Tan Son Nhat was designed to have an annual capacity of 25 million by 2020, but by 2017 the number had topped 40 million.

This has put huge pressure on its infrastructure.