Ho Chi Minh City Airport

I flew biz class ANA from SGN via NRT to HNL. SGN check-in was very quick departure immigration relatively fast and I spent one hour in the F/J all-airline lounge before boarding. I stop at SGN twice a year and have found SGN Airport to be very efficient and the F/J departure lounge is really quite good with an excellent selection of food internet terminals etc.

I arrived in SGN yesterday at 8 pm and was off the plane collected my landing visa went through customs exchanged money and was out the door by 8:30. This was surprisingly quick compared to last year's visit when it took hours. I think this was mostly due to arriving at a non-peak time so the lines through immigration were short. The Landing Visa desk took a while to notice me but otherwise processed my paperwork very quickly.

I have used SGN 10 times over the past 2 years most recently in April. While there is not much to do if one has an extended layover this airport always seems to operate with a great deal of efficiency and courtesy. I have always had good experiences with check-in security baggage and immigration. Just be sure to bring a good book to read because it's definitely not a very interesting or exciting airport.

Arriving from CKS just before 1pm there was virtually no wait getting through immigration (perhaps because I was one of the first off the plane) or in collecting my luggage. The pre-paid taxi stand was a deal: US$7 to central Saigon with the clerk walking me to the cab. Check-in at EVA Air business class counter a breeze. I waited for long lines to disappear before heading to emigration and whisked through the two control points both times (SGN-PNH and SGN-CKS). The 1st/business lounge is comfortable with a decent selection of snacks and drinks and an enclosed smoking section. SGN certainly beats the dickens out of SFO and most other US airports.

I travel frequently to HCMC and the airport has definitely improved from the days when you had to wait hours to get through immigration. The trick for us frequent flyers is to pick a flight that lands at about noon and you will be out of the airport in 15 minutes as there a few flight landing at that time.

Tan Son Nhat airport has been upgraded but the immigration officers do not work very well. It took me over twenty minutes to go through immigration with just 4 people in front of me!! Waiting room is confined.

Even though SaiGon airport is not as great and modern as Ha Noi airport it's still at the international standard. The waiting room is spacious bright and cool. The services there are very good and people are extremely friendly. It took me only about 20 minutes to get thru immigrations. (Yes it could be worse sometimes it could take up to 50 minutes but it all depends on the time of the day and how many flights arrive at a specific time.- You can not really blame on the immigration officers.). I can assure that the immigration process at Saigon Airport is at least better than the immigration process at Singapore Airport- It took us at least 1 hour just to get thru immigration there).

I take on board all of the other comments regarding Saigon Airport but this is a developing country. The airport is in need of a major sorting-out but I found the facilities and service to be adequate and had no problems passing through on three different occasions recently. A definite plus is the very good air-con which is lacking in other developing countries' airports.

Technically it's no longer Saigon but Ho Chi Minh City. Live with it folks. A weird fusion of old and new - old hangars possibly relics from the South Vietnamese days and what I can see efforts made to modernise the waiting areas. The aircon was all right and the waiting area was comfortable and bright. There were enough seats and there are 4 big screen TVs in the waiting area to amuse passengers. My main bone to pick was clearing customs entering HCMC. It took me close to 50 minutes to get through! Furthermore it was a counter managed by 2 officers! Frustrating. The service was cold and a tinge of suspicion thrown in - the officers never even broke into a smile or a greeting.

Tan Son Nhat is too small to handle so many flights at a time. My flights back from Bangkok (10:20am) and Hong Kong (10:40am) - (2 times) were later than some earlier flights and thus we were at the back of the lengthy queues - a very amusing notice is that there were 2 immigration officers sitting at every counter but the two checked the same passport of the same only passenger... I wonder why they did not do their job separately as one officer checks one passenger's passport. It took nearly 90 minutes for my queue of 30 passenger to go through the immigration and I was 30th being the last passenger of the queue!