AVIATION
Suvarnabhumi Airport braces for year-end spike
- By: BOONSONG KOSITCHOTETHANA
- Published: 30/12/2008 at 12:00 AM
- Newspaper section: Business
Nearly one million passengers are expected pass through Suvarnabhumi airport during the current holiday season, signalling a recovery from the late-November airport closure that threatened to curb arrivals to Thailand.
Airports of Thailand Plc has estimated the number of people passing through Bangkok's main airport between Dec 25 and Jan 5 at 980,000, or 82,000 a day.
The figure is still nearly 20% under the daily average of about 100,000 registered in the same 2007 year-end period.
But AoT believes passenger traffic is recovering faster than expected, at least for the holiday season, though concerns persist about the impact of the global economic crisis and domestic political tensions after the holiday season ends.
Travel and tourism industry leaders believe the eight-day closure of Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang airports by the anti-government People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) between Nov 26 and Dec 2 may prove to have been the decisive factor tipping Thailand into recession.
The majority state-owned AoT estimated that 787,000 of the passengers using Suvarnabhumi during the 12-day peak holiday period were international and the rest domestic travellers.
International passenger traffic for the current season is 18% lower than in the previous period while the domestic total is 12% less, AoT acting president Serirat Prasutanond said yesterday.
Airlines are putting about 660 flights a day through the airport during the period, 448 international and 172 domestic, he said.
A total of 24 airlines operating scheduled or charter services have requested 277 additional flights, 175 international and 102 domestic flights, to cater for the surging demand.
Suvarnabhumi's passenger traffic in November contracted 26.05% year-on-year to 2.6 million, due to the double impact of the global travel slowdown and the airport shutdown.
Passenger traffic from January to November for Suvarnabhumi shrank 3.17% year-on-year to 36.25 million.
Passenger traffic through Suvarnabhumi for all of 2008 is expected to be close to last year's level, at about 41 million, against the airport's capacity of 45 million a year, according to Mr Serirat.
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