Thai Airways Postpones Brussels Flight

22nd Mar 2016

As news of the terrorist attack on Brussels’s Zaventem Airport are still fresh and the airport announced closure until further notice, most airlines have already announced they will cancel flights to and from Brussels until it is reopened.

One such airline is Thai Airways from Thailand. THAI’s last flight was TG934, which departed from Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport at 00:30 AM and landed at Zaventem Airport at 7:00 AM according to local time. All 20 crew members and 326 passengers onboard were accounted for upon the plane’s arrival at the airport.

The return flight, TG935, however, is now postponed due to the airport being closed for operations following the attack. The flight was originally supposed to take a return trip from Brussels to Bangkok. It was to take off from Zaventem Airport on Wednesday at 6:10 AM and land at Suvarnabhumi Airport at 13:10 PM, local time.

The airline operates four weekly flights on a Boeing B777-300 aircraft to Brussels, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays.

THAI Plans Additional Staff Cut-offs

Meanwhile, Thai Airways is also planning to trim down its staff in an attempt to stop its financial losses.

Chief financial officer at Thai Airways International, Narongchai Wongthanavimok said the following on the topic yesterday:

The company has set a budget of 2.2 billion baht for the new cost-cutting plan.

The said plan is expected to begin in the next month or two, but there is no time frame for the round announced as of yet.

In addition to laying off some of its staff, Thai Airways will also sell off some of its property. It is expected that the Thailand-based carrier will sell up to 30 office buildings and staff accommodations it owns in the country and abroad.

In 2015, faced with similar issues, the carrier fired 1,401 of its employees. The staff reduction program last year cost the national carrier 3.7 billion baht.

THAI Resumes Moscow Flights in October, Returns to US in 2017

Thai Airways has also revealed it will resume flights to and from Moscow by October. Their plan coincides with the tourism high season and the airline is looking to get in on that by returning to Moscow.

At the same time, a spokesperson for the airline said that the plans for a return to United States are in motion and this should happen sometimes next year.

THAI also announced it will increase frequencies to ASEAN countries by bringing more flights in 2016.