ROUTES ASIA: Airline Briefings - Spotlight on Thai Carriers

Thai Airways International could add three additional frequencies to Europe from this winter, it emerged at an Airline Briefing session at Routes Asia in Incheon, South Korea yesterday (March 28).

Nongnui Ratanavichai, Director Traffic Planning Department, said the additional frequencies would be available due to the airline receiving two Airbuses this year. “With the two new aircraft we will be adding flights to Japan, Singapore, India, Korea and China. There will be capacity for three additional frequencies into Europe too,” she said.

Ratanavichai confirmed that the focus of Thai’s strategy are the China and India markets, with the airline working with a network strategy looking at 2013–2017.

Big day for Bangkok Airways

It was also a significant day for the other carrier presenting an Airline Briefing, Bangkok Airways, as it launched inaugural service to Dhaka, Bangladesh yesterday. “It’s a big day for us. Three weeks ago we went into Mumbai and it is going well,” said Pieter Wiesner, Senior Vice President, Network Management.

He added that the airline plans to begin service to Chennai and Bangalore by the end of this year. Going forward it hope to introduce service from Samui to Kuala Lumpur, where it “sees unique opportunities for connecting traffic with Malaysia Airlines” during 2012 and service from Bangkok to Singapore and Hong Kong in 2013.

Full video interviews with both Nongnui Ratanavichai from Thai Airways International and Pieter Wiesner from Bangkok Airlines will be featured on Routesonline and in The HUB in the coming week.

For all the news and photos from the event follow Routes News and Routeonline on Twitter: @routesnews and @routesonline.