Number of passengers, flights at airports in provinces drop
The number of flights and passengers at 28 airports under the Airports Department decreased by one per cent over the same period last year, the department chief said on Wednesday.
Ampawan Wannako, director general of the Airports Department, said some 14.4 million passengers were recorded at the 28 airports under the department during the first nine months of the 2019 fiscal year or from October 2018 to June 2019, adding that this represented a one-per-cent- drop compared to the first nine months of the 2018 fiscal year.
She said about 115,000 flights used the 28 airports between October 2018 to June 2019, a drop of one per cent.
The decrease was mainly caused by the cancellations of in-country flights by several domestic airlines.
Ampawan said her department was seeking to add flights to foreign cities from the 28 airports to compensate for the drop in the domestic flights.
On July 10, the low-cost airline T’way Air from South Korea launched a new route from Seoul to Krabi with seven flights per week.
In October, Blue Panorama Airlines, a low-cost airline from Italy, will launch a Warsaw-Krabi route with one flight per week, Ampawan said, adding three more European airlines are interested in introducing flights to Krabi and Surat Thani.
She expected that the number of passengers using the 28 airports would not grow much during the last three months of the 2019 fiscal year.
The anticipated number of passengers in July was 1.54 million, in Augus 1.52 million and in September at 1.37 million. The number of passengers is expected to grow by 0.69 per cent in July and by 0.47 per cent in August but fall by 0.10 per cent in September.
Her department estimates that that number of passengers using the 28 airports would stand about 18.82 per cent at the end of September, a 1.33 per cent fall compared to the 2018 fiscal year.
