The rain began falling across the city around 5:30 p.m., throwing operations into disarray at Tan Son Nhat, one of the country’s busiest airports. Several departures were pushed back while a string of arriving flights, unable to land, either circled overhead or diverted to the Phu Quoc and Can Tho airports, the former a resort island about 300 km to the southwest.
Hoang Yen, a passenger on Sun PhuQuoc Airways flight 9G855, said her plane left Hanoi’s Noi Bai airport at 3:30 p.m. for what should have been a two-hour hop to Ho Chi Minh City. Instead, after more than an hour circling near Tan Son Nhat in bad weather, the captain announced the flight would divert to Phu Quoc to refuel and wait out the storm. A notice to passengers said the aircraft would not leave Phu Quoc for the return leg until 9 p.m.
Inside Tan Son Nhat, departure boards showed numerous flights running 45 minutes to more than an hour behind schedule.
Heavy rain triggered a chain of flight delays, affecting passengers flying into and out of Tan Son Nhat airport in Ho Chi Minh City on the evening of June 11, 2026. Photo by Read/Ha Giang |
A Vietnam Airlines representative said six of its Ho Chi Minh City-bound flights had to make temporary landings at other airports before continuing. The carrier said its schedule remained tangled by knock-on delays even after the weather eased, and that it was updating passengers through the evening.
Vietjet said it might adjust its operations because of the weather, and Sun PhuQuoc Airways warned that several overnight services on the Ho Chi Minh City-Hanoi route would also be affected.
Rainy-season storms regularly disrupt Tan Son Nhat, the chronically overloaded hub for southern Vietnam, and similar diversions to Can Tho and Phu Quoc have recurred through most monsoon seasons in recent years.
The downpour also flooded streets and snarled traffic across the city, including Nguyen Van Khoi and Pham Van Chieu in the former Go Vap District and Quoc Huong Street in the former Thu Duc City.
Rainfall across Ho Chi Minh City on the afternoon of June 11 mostly measured 20 to 100 mm, topping 130 mm in some areas, according to the Southern Regional Hydro-Meteorological Center.
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