Flight Delays Significantly Reduced for Da Nang, Vietnam Departures

‘New Air Traffic Flow Management’ Operation
Ground Delay Reduced from 11 Minutes to 3 Minutes per Flight

The delay time for flights on the Vietnam Danang route, which frequently experiences departure delays, is expected to be significantly reduced.

On the 16th, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced that it has officially started operating the ‘New Air Traffic Flow Management’ from the 15th, which drastically reduces departure delays for flights to Danang, a popular overseas travel destination in Vietnam.

The photo is not related to the article. Photo by Hyunmin Kim kimhyun81@

The new air traffic flow management is a method called ‘departure time assignment based on the arrival time at the destination airport,’ which informs airlines of adjusted departure times in advance by considering the landing availability time at the arrival airport.

The Ministry conducted a pilot operation of the new air traffic flow management for flights to Danang from May to July, and as a result, the average ground delay decreased by more than 70%, from 273 minutes (11 minutes per flight) to 78 minutes (3 minutes per flight).

Until now, flights departing from Korea to Danang used a ‘simple time separation’ method that uniformly applied a 13-minute departure interval between flights to control traffic volume at the destination airport. Due to this, the 24 daily flights to Danang experienced an average ground delay of 273 minutes per day (a minimum of 12 minutes to a maximum of 100 minutes per flight).

The Ministry estimates that the new air traffic flow management for flights to Danang will reduce fuel consumption during ground waiting by approximately 12,090 liters (ℓ) per month. Furthermore, the economic benefit from fuel savings is expected to reach 14.5 billion KRW annually.

Yu Kyung-soo, Director of Aviation Safety Policy at the Ministry, said, “We will continue to actively improve air traffic flow management on international routes with frequent flight delays to minimize inconvenience for air passengers and do our best to increase the on-time performance of our national carriers.”