After more than six months of work to repair and improve them, they reopened on schedule, Tran Van Thi, director of the Cuu Long Corporation for Investment, Development and Project Management, which carried it out, said.

Tan Son Nhat Airport in HCMC also built four taxiways and installed a signaling system, aviation signs and a power station at a cost of over VND2 trillion ($86 million).

In the next phase, the five existing taxiways will be upgraded and new rapid exit taxiways will be built, they will all be connected, a drainage system will be built, and taxiway lights and more aviation signboards will be installed. The work will be completed by the end of this year.

At Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi, the first phase of the VND2.03 trillion ($87.4 million) upgrade saw runway 1B renovated -- it had been damaged after 16 years of use -- three new taxiways built and existing ones upgraded, flight management construction works completed, and signal lights, signal paint and a drainage system installed.

The other runway is expected to be repaired in the second phase.

Deputy Prime Minister Truong Hoa Binh said the two were particularly important projects considering the degradation of runways in the country's two largest airports.

Since 2017 they have been chronically overloaded and handling new-generation aircraft with huge loads, which degraded the runways and taxiways.

The damage was evident from the visible cracks and deformation and subsidence of the asphalt surface since 2016.