guide

Arriving at Long Thanh Airport, Step by Step

The arrival sequence at Long Thanh International Airport from aircraft door to the kerb, and where a brand-new terminal is most likely to slow you down.

Before the walkthrough, one caveat

Long Thanh has not yet carried commercial passengers, so this page describes the arrival sequence every Vietnamese international airport follows — the sequence Long Thanh’s systems are built to run — flagging at each step what a new terminal changes. When the airport is operating, this walkthrough gets rewritten from direct observation, and the hedges come out.

Step 1: aircraft door to immigration

You leave the aircraft, walk the pier, and follow arrivals routing toward passport control. At Long Thanh the walk is the first surprise: phase one is a very large terminal, and gate-to-immigration distances will be long compared with what regional travellers are used to. Moving walkways and clear routing exist in the design; how intuitively the wayfinding reads in real use is exactly the kind of thing opening months reveal.

With small children, mobility concerns, or after a red-eye, this stretch is where having an assistant meet you at the aircraft changes the experience most — not by shortening the corridor, but by removing every decision in it.

Step 2: immigration

Have your passport and any required entry documentation ready before you reach the hall — sorted out well before travel through official government channels. The queue you join, the counters open, and the pace all depend on how many flights landed in your bank; a new airport’s early months add staff who are themselves new to the building. An assistance escort helps here mainly by putting you in the right line the first time with documents in hand.

What no service changes: the officer at the counter makes every decision, for every traveller.

Step 3: baggage reclaim

Screens map flights to belts. In a terminal this size the belts can be a further walk, and early-operations baggage delivery times are historically the least predictable part of new airports — the belt systems are among the most complex machinery in the building. Porters and trolleys solve the physical part; patience may be needed for the wait itself.

Step 4: customs

Vietnam runs the standard green/red channel system. Nothing to declare, within allowances: green channel, usually a walk-through with occasional screening. Goods to declare: red channel. Allowance details are published by Vietnamese customs; check current official figures if you are carrying significant cash, alcohol, tobacco or commercial goods.

Step 5: the arrivals hall and the kerb

The doors open onto the public hall — the moment that decides how your first hour in Vietnam feels. At an established airport you would push through a wall of drivers and signs toward a familiar taxi rank. At Long Thanh in its opening period, pickup zones, ride-hailing points and bus stands will all be operating for their first season, and the road leg into the city deserves to have been planned before you flew.

If someone is meeting you, agree an exact, named meeting point beforehand rather than “outside arrivals” — in a terminal this large, that phrase describes several hundred metres of kerb.

The realistic time budget

Nobody can honestly publish gate-to-kerb times for an airport that has not opened. What can be said: the sequence above has a floor set by walking distance even when every queue is empty, and the variable parts — immigration and baggage — swell with each simultaneous arrival. Budget generously in the opening period, especially for onward bookings that cannot slip.