Bangkok Airways Reveals Plans for 2017

11th Jan 2017

Asia’s boutique airline Bangkok Airways plans to expand its business in this year, but it appears it will not go full-throttle. Instead, the regional carrier will play to its strengths and take a more cautious approach.

The carrier revealed it aims to increase the number of passengers it will serve in 2017 by between 13 and 15 per cent compared to last year and believes it can do this in line with the growth of tourist arrivals in Thailand. At the moment, the Tourism Authority of Thailand projected those to get up to 35 million, compared with 32.5 million in 2016.

In addition, Bangkok Airways also plans to boost its revenue by 10-12% from 2016 and increase load factor to 72% for 2017, up from 69% for the whole 2016. The airline’s yield, however, is probably going to suffer between 4 and 5 per cent, mostly due to higher cost of fuel per barrel (US$10) and increased competition.

The airline also doesn’t plan to drastically increase its fleet and will add only four new aircraft to its fleet in 2017. This will include three Airbus A319s and one ATR 72-900 to bring the fleet to 39 total aircraft from the current 35 planes Bangkok Airways has.

Also, the airline said it will add only two new routes to its schedule in 2017. This will be Samui-Guangzhou, which is slated for this month and Samui-Chongqing, planned for later in March.

Apart from the two new routes planned for 2017, Bangkok Airways will also increase frequency on five of its current routes.

Bangkok-Danang will move up from four flights per week to seven, Bangkok-Vientiane will be operated 14 times per week instead of just seven times, Chiang Mai-Samui will get a second daily flight (currently it’s just one daily flight), and the same goes for Chiang Mai-Phuket, while Samui-Chengdu will move from four flights per week to seven flights per week.

In the first nine months (January-September) of 2016, Bangkok Airways carried 4.25 million passengers, which was 10% more than in the same period the year prior. The carrier also posted an aggregate net profit for January-September 2016 of 2.14 billion baht (up 20.4% year-on-year) and total revenue of 20.5 billion baht (10% up Y-on-Y).

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