All Access Don Mueang Being Studied

14th Jan 2013

A proposal is being under study allowing all kinds of commercial flights to use the old Don Mueang Airport. Currently, the airport only serves budget airlines with limited service as a matter of government policy.

In a recent cabinet resolution dated June 2012, AoT officials contended that it hinders the country's efforts to draw more scheduled flights to the airport.

They argued that the restrictions on the use of the Don Mueang Airport allowing only low-cost carriers is counterproductive to the development of the country's travel industry. Don Mueang should be open to all kinds of commercial air service as the facility is capable of assuming its role as the country's full-service hub.

The impediment the AoT officials pointed out is the way the words contained in the resolution which states that Don Mueang caters only to low-cost carriers with point-to-point overseas and local services.

The resolution clearly runs counter to the government's dual-airport policy to transform Don Mueang into a second international gateway alongside Suvarnabhumi to serve greater Bangkok area. The creation of a second international gateway in Bangkok will not only help ease the congestion at Suvarnabhumi, its primary international gateway, but it will also accommodate the growing air traffic in the capital.

According to AoT's Mr. Somchai, the airport would have a hard time to attract more traffic if the current resolution is not amended. That would be detrimental to the growth of the airport as a secondary hub which is limited only to host low-cost carriers.

Despite the attractive incentives promised to locators, authorities failed to convince 11 other LCCs to move their base from Suvarnabhumi to Don Mueang since the government designated the century-old airport as LCC hub in 2010.

Moving their operations to a new location can be costly for budget airlines which is the primary reason why many LCCs didn't nudge a bit to transfer to Don Mueang. This makes the effort of the government to transform the old airport into a full-pledged hub for budget airlines a futile attempt which would have eased congestion at Suvarnabhumi.

The primary airport has been operating past its capacity since 2010 which is 45 million passenger annually. Though the expansion project is on track, completion date is expected in five years.

Aside from the AirAsia group - AirAsia (Malaysia), Indonesia AirAsia, and Thai AirAsia, the only other budget airlines operating at the old Don Mueang Airport are the Bangkok-based LCCs Nok Air and Orient Thai. Majority of the LCCs flying to Bangkok remain operating from the Suvarnabhumi.

Don Mueang was inundated in meters-deep water when the capital was flooded in 2010, said to be the worst in half a century. It was reopened in March last year and welcomed its first locator, Nok Air.

The AirAsia group, meanwhile, moved their hubs to Don Mueang on October. The group provides the most passenger volume to the country among budget carriers.

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