A US$2 billion Chinese-built airport in Cambodia opened its runways to the first planes on Tuesday, bringing hopes for a tourism revival but beset by accusations of land evictions.
Officials hope the facility — which replaces Phnom Penh’s old airport as the capital’s main aviation transport hub — will boost Cambodia’s struggling tourism industry.
Built by a major state-owned Chinese construction firm, the Techo International Airport is a 2,600-hectare (10 square mile) behemoth jointly funded by the Cambodian government and the privately owned Overseas Cambodian Investment Corporation (OCIC).
A water cannon display greeted the first jet — an Air Cambodia plane travelling from China — to land at the airport on Tuesday, and traditional Khmer dancers welcomed its 160 passengers as they disembarked.
Passengers rolled their suitcases past golden Buddhist statues and tall trees under the airport’s steel grid-shell roof designed by award-winning British architects Foster and Partners.
It was “a great honour to be one of first passengers in the airport”, said British passenger David Weare, who flew in on Singapore Airlines.
“What I can see, it looks amazing, it’s fantastic…. I can’t wait to get through and see what the rest of it is all like,” he told AFP.
Sinn Chanserey Vutha, spokesman for Cambodia’s civil aviation regulator, told reporters that the first of three phases of development cost some $2 billion.
Located 20 kilometres south of the capital, Techo airport will be able to handle up to 13 million passengers a year, and aims to reach 50 million by 2050.
The old Phnom Penh International Airport, operating since 1959, was closed for good on the eve of the new airport’s debut.
Sinn Chanserey Vutha said it was closed due to “problems” such as a lack of capacity for large planes to land.
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Techo is the second major airport in Cambodia to open in the space of two years, following the inauguration of a US$1.1 billion Chinese-funded terminal near the Angkor Wat temple complex in November 2023.
But the Sahmakum Teang Tnaut (STT) NGO estimates around 2,000 households have already been or faced eviction as a result of Techo airport’s construction.
“For some, the airport signifies a final devastating chapter in a long struggle for land, livelihood and community,” it said in a report seen by AFP Tuesday.
The civil aviation official could not confirm the number of local residents affected, but said such disputes were “almost resolved”.
Tourism is hugely important to Cambodia’s economy, but visitor numbers nosedived in the years following the Covid-19 pandemic and have struggled to pick up.
Last year Cambodia received 6.7 million international visitors, generating approximately US$3.6 billion.
