Bangkok Airways will start tomorrow imposing fees for passengers who do not turn up without prior request for a change of flight.
The SET-listed regional airline is charging the penalty fee to curb growing passenger "no-shows", which cause wastage of flights and affect revenue-earning opportunity.
The airline has seen such incidents spreading from its flights to Bangladesh and India to other routes, and saw the need to curtail that practice, an insider told the Bangkok Post yesterday.
The fees will be imposed on both domestic and international flights at 500 baht per leg on domestic flights for an economy class ticket and 1,000 baht for international services.
Business class passengers will be subject to a 1,000-baht per leg fee for domestic travel and 2,000 baht for international flights.
Passengers who request a change of flight at least two hours before departure is scheduled with the airline's reservation centre will not be charged such fees.
As a full-service airline, Bangkok Airways has not imposed such fees before, although others such as Cathay Pacific do have no-show penalty fees.
It is a different story for low-cost carriers like AirAsia, which treat no-shows as invalidating the ticket for the flights.
However, the Bangkok Airways insider said some of the higher-tier tickets -- those who pay the top fares and are categorised as "favoured" flyers -- may not be forced to pay the no-show fees.