Ex-official picked AOT president
A FORMER OFFICIAL of Airports of Thailand Plc (AOT), Nitinai Sirismatthakarn, has been chosen as AOT's new president with his priority task being expansion of facilities at airports during his four-year term.
“Nitinai used to work with the company for years. He was picked as the new head of the company because he has direct experience in the airport and aviation industry,” Prasong Poontaneat, chairman of the board of directors, said yesterday.
He said Nitinai should begin work in March this year and would be in office for four years.
Nitinai will replace AOT director Nirandra Theeranartsin, who is currently the acting president.
The company’s management and presidency selection committee chaired by Rakop Srisupa-at, yesterday interviewed four short-listed candidates including Nitiani. The other candidates were Korkij Danchai-vichit, Krit Thanisarapong and ManoonratLertkomolsuk.
Before vying for the top AOT job, Nitinai had resigned as senior executive vice president for business |development at Thailand Future Foundation.
Prasong said the new president would push many new projects and expansion of airport facilities nationwide, after the board of directors yesterday held a meeting and announced many new projects.
One of the new projects is to build a second runway at airports in order to maintain full capacity if the runways need renovations. A new 60-metre-wide runway will also come with an air-traffic system.
A budget of more than Bt20 billion has been reserved for runway construction.
AOT will forward its proposals to the Cabinet for approval soon.
Another big project is building a second passenger terminal at Suvarnabhumi Airport, scheduled for completion by 2018. Once the new terminal is completed, it would help increase airport capacity to serve up to 61 million visitors in 2018 and 64 million in 2019.
The second terminal alone will serve about 20 million passengers per year, about 12 million domestic passengers and 8 million international passengers.
The Bt27-billion new terminal will be designed to serve big aircraft.
