Geneva-based air transport technology firm SITA has been selected by Vietnam’s Sun Group to build out a fully self-service biometric passenger processing stack at Phu Quoc International Airport ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in 2027. The companies have announced that the deployment will span a new Terminal 2 designed to handle 24 million passengers annually at opening, with long-term capacity scaling to 50 million, and that a parallel memorandum of understanding positions SITA as Sun Group’s strategic technology partner for additional airport developments in Vietnam.
The Terminal 2 build-out is centered on SITA’s Smart Path biometric coordination layer, which ties check-in, bag drop, and boarding touchpoints to a common biometric identity anchor captured at first enrollment. Phu Quoc will install 150 Smart Path kiosks for check-in, seat selection, boarding pass printing, and bag tagging; 100 Smart Path Bag Drop Scan and Go units for self-service luggage drop; and 38 dual-lane Smart Path Gates for automated boarding. SITA Flex Hybrid will support 204 common-use workstations for passenger processing, with a Local Departure Control System deployed as the fallback path if the common-use layer goes down.
SITA Bag Manager Lite will handle real-time baggage tracking across four workstations and 20 handhelds, with an Airport Operational Database, AirportVision Evolved driving 397 flight information displays, and Airport Management covering ten operational workstations rounding out the stack. Development started in March 2026 and Terminal 2 is scheduled to open in July 2027, roughly three months ahead of APEC.
The deal continues a 2019 working relationship that began at Van Don Airport. The MOU designates the Phu Quoc operating model as the template for planned Sun Group airports at Phan Thiet, Con Dao, and Rach Gia, with a five-year target of at least five airports aimed at the Skytrax 5-Star standard. Phu Quoc itself will be operated with Changi Airports International of Singapore.
Sun Group president Nguyen Chi Thanh said SITA’s end-to-end capabilities will help deliver smarter and more seamless passenger experiences across the airport portfolio. SITA Asia-Pacific president Sumesh Patel framed Vietnam as one of the region’s fastest-growing aviation markets, noting that the deal supports Sun Group’s tourism and hospitality ecosystem on Phu Quoc, which also includes the November 2025 launch of Sun Phu Quoc Airways.
The deployment lands in an active phase of Vietnamese airport biometrics. Da Nang Airport opened a dedicated biometric lane tied to the national VNeID credential earlier this month, and IATA’s proof-of-concept results recently confirmed that biometric digital identity for international air travel is interoperable at scale. SITA’s broader positioning on biometric adoption was detailed in its 1.6 billion dollar 2024 revenue disclosure, which flagged biometric airport deployments as the primary growth driver.
Sources: SITA
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
