Suvarnabhumi ready to welcome back domestic flights on Mar 29
Suvarnabhumi Airport is ready to welcome domestic flights back from Don Mueang Airport, beginning from March 29.
Serirat Prasutanond, acting president of the state-controlled Airports of Thailand Plc (AoT) which operates six international airports in Thailand, yesterday said many airlines, including the national flag carrier Thai Airways International (THAI), have agreed to move their services back to Suvarnabhumi airport from March 29 onward.
Serirat, also a director of Suvarnabhumi airport, said some airlines, which still disagree to the government plan to relocate all domestic flights to Suvarnabhumi, will be persuaded to move back and explained about the advantages of the relocation, saying that Suvarnabhumi is not as congested as some airline operators might have thought.
He disclosed that, according to the government’s single airport policy, Suvarnabhumi will handle both domestic and international flights while Don Mueang will be reserved only for chartered flights and will soon become an aviation maintenance centre.
During the Chinese New Year festival, Suvarnabhumi airport has welcomed about 100,000 passengers daily as an additional 165 flights from 21 local and international airlines have been operating during the period from January 24 to February 5, however the global economic slowdown has severely affected the chartered flight business to drop as much as 50 percent.
In September 2006, Don Mueang airport had been closed to scheduled flights with the opening of Suvarnabhumi airport but later was reopened on March 25, 2007, to relieve congestion at Suvarnabhumi and allow construction flaws at the new airport to be repaired.
At present, some THAI domestic flights and all domestic flights of Nok Air and One-Two-Go operate out of Don Mueang.
Recently, acting THAI president Narongsak Sangapong said the relocation of THAI flights from Don Mueang to Suvarnabhumi would coincide with the start of the summer flight schedule and is expected to help the airline be able to cut certain operation costs, especially its management costs and duplication of activities at both airports at the same time.
However, Patee Sarasin, chief executive officer of Nok Air – which operates flights to 16 destinations within Thailand, recently told reporters that the budget airline had accepted the single airport policy but it needed time to prepare for the relocation to Suvarnabhumi, possibly for the period of one year or until the second phase construction of Suvarnabhumi.
Patee said he personally disagreed with the relocation plan, saying the relocation would cost each airline 10 to 20 million baht, as the low-cost airline had already borne the relocation cost twice, from moving from Don Mueang to Suvarnabhumi and then from moving from Suvarnabhumi back to Don Mueang in 2007.
Meanwhile, Udom Tantiprasongchai, chairman of One-Two-Go Airlines which operates daily flights to three major destinations of Chiang Mai, Hat Yai and Phuket, also said he would rather see the airlines have a choice of not moving to Suvarnabhumi.
Udom said he doubted that Suvarnabhumi had sufficient space to accommodate the airline and complained that the changes in top-level policies would adversely affected airlines.
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