04 AVIATION
Thai air traffic takes off again Thomas Hundt
Air traffic in Thailand accelerated strongly in the past 10 years. From 2009 to 2019, the number of passengers increased from 58 million to 165 million, and aircraft movements increased from 0.42 million to 1.07 million.
The aviation market in Thailand, 2019
Indicator
Total aircraft movements
Number 1,067,828
Domestic traffic
553,876
International traffic
513,952
Total passenger transport
165,076,011
Domestic traffic
76,253,599
International traffic
88,822,412
Source: Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand.
The Covid-19 pandemic is now keeping large par ts of the domestic aircraft fleets on the ground. The airlines had to largely cease operations from the end of March 2020. Aircraft movements dropped to around one-tenth of the 2019 level in April-June 2020.
Domestic air traffic is recovering Domestic flights increased from April to July 2020 from 2,031 to 25,701 flights per month. The airlines want to reactivate more routes this summer because Thais are now travelling more to domestic destinations. However, reaching the monthly average of 46,156 domestic flights in 2019 is still a long way off.
UPDATE 4/2020
Restrictions on international air travel and entr y will affect the international airline business for even longer. International flights remained at around 3,000 to 3,500 flight movements per month from April to July 2020. The highly indebted Thai Airways company applied for protected bankruptcy proceedings at the end of May 2020 and is negotiating with creditors with regard to restructuring and reorganisation. The national airline’s 75 aircraft are currently on the ground. The other major airlines, Thai AirAsia (62 aircraft) and Bangkok Airways (40 aircraft), have restarted part of their flight operations.
Airports were too small in 2019 and prepare for a recovery Thailand has 38 airpor ts. The Ministry of Transport’s Department of Airports manages 28 mostly smaller civil airports. Bangkok Airways owns three tourist airports. The public company Airports of Thailand (AOT) operates the six larger airports in the country. The larger ones worked beyond their capacity limits in 2019 and should therefore be expanded.
