Airline business in Thailand keeps growing

BANGKOK, April 25 (TNA) - The airline business in Thailand has continued sustaining growth, thanks to increasing air passengers globally. Caretaker Transport Minister Chadchart Sittipunt told participants of a workshop, held in Bangkok on Friday, that airline travellers to Chiang Mai Province in the Thai North during this year's Songkran or Traditional Thai New Year Festival in mid-April totaled about 120,000 people, compared to 9,000 train passengers and 18,000 inter-provincial bus passengers of state-run Transport Company Limited. Chadchart acknowledged it has been projected that air traffic in Asia should grow by 40 per cent in 2040; so, every concerned agency in Thailand should strengthen their cooperation, as there is a potential that the Thai Kingdom would become a regional aviation hub by then. Suttipong Kongpool, Director of Aeronautical Radio of Thailand for Policy and Strategy, reported that air traffic in Asia and the Pacific enjoyed enormous growth in 2013, while in the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), in which Thailand is a member country, the airline business is foreseen to continue growing in the future. In Thailand alone, Suttipong acknowledged, air traffic has grown nearly 20 per cent, to 669,000 flights annually, and it is expected to further grow to two million by 2030, enabling the country to be then ranked the world's 12th heaviest air traffic. Meanwhile, President of Thai AirAsiaX Nadda Buranasiri announced that Thai AirAsiaX will open a new route, from Bangkok's Don Mueang Airport to South Korea's Incheon Airport near Seoul, starting from June 17, 2014, to cope with the growing competition among low cost carriers. Nadda revealed that reservations of air tickets for first 5,000 seats of the new route, using AirBus A330-300 planes, have been available since 11pm of April 22, 2014, Thailand's time, until May 3, 2014 at the price of 1,990 baht each for one-way tickets, with passengers allowed to select their departure dates during June 17, 2014-April 30, 2015. According to the top executive, there will be a daily flight serving passengers on the new route, with the departure from Bangkok's Don Mueang Airport to South Korea's Incheon Airport set at 8:05am and from Incheon Airport to Don Mueang set at 4:50pm. More than 1.3 million South Koreans visited Thailand last year, becoming the 5th largest group of international visitors to the Thai Kingdom, while around 400,000 Thai tourists visited South Korea in 2013. Besides, AirAsiaX plans to introduce other new routes this year, from Bangkok's Don Mueang Airport to Narita, Osaka and Kansai Airports, all in Japan. (TNA)