Long Thanh airport gets an opening date: 1 December 2026

Vietnam’s ~US$12.8bn Long Thanh mega-airport takes its first commercial flight on 1 December, with a phased handover of international traffic — and fee discounts to fill it fast.

The read. Long Thanh — the roughly US$12.8bn airport 40km east of Ho Chi Minh City — now has a firm start date after years of anticipation: 1 December 2026. Operator ACV’s proposed transition runs in three phases to March 2028, when over 90% of international traffic shifts across from Tan Son Nhat. To pull carriers in early, ACV is proposing service-fee discounts of 20–50% through 2027. The date matters more than any single number: it turns a long-running project into a fixed planning input for everyone routing through southern Vietnam.

What to watch. With 34 airlines already surveying operations, the businesses around the airport — cargo, logistics and hospitality — now have a real timeline to build against rather than a moving target. The earliest discounted routes signal where day-one traffic and demand will concentrate; watch which carriers commit to the Phase 1 window and how quickly ground-side capacity fills in behind them.