Suvarnabhumi Airport safe from floods : manager
Suvarnabhumi international Airport is expected to stay dry during the worst floods in five decades that are now creeping towards the capital's centre, the airport's management said Friday.
"I am confident that we can keep Suvarnabhumi dry," said Somchai Sawasdeepon, acting general manager of Suvarnabhumi Airport, 20 kilometres east of the city centre, which has served as the main international airport for Bangkok since 2006.
The capital's old airport, Don Mueang, 15 kilometres north of the centre, and now used only for some domestic flights, has been closed for weeks with its runway currently under a metre of water.
Bangkok's north and north-east suburbs have been inundated by runoff from Thailand's central plains which were flooded by the swollen Chao Phraya River last month.
The water is seeping through Bangkok en route to the Gulf of Thailand, with government authorities trying desperately to keep the inundation out of the centre of the capital by diverting the flow to the east and west of the metropolis.
"Our water management system at Suvarnabhumi is separate from Bangkok's, so we can control it," Somchai said.
The airport is protected by 3.5-metre dyke surrounding the complex, which also includes a system of drainage canals and reservoirs with a storage capacity of 4 million cubic metres.
The reservoirs' current level is 1 million cubic metres, Somchai said. The airport is connected to Bangkok by elevated roads and a train track.
Somchai said that passenger traffic at Suvarnabhumi Airport had increased 10 per cent in October, boosted mainly by a 14.5 per cent jump in domestic traffic as Bangkokians fled the city.
International passengers were up 3.5 per cent, but started to fall off in late October.
"After October 24, arrivals from some Asian markets such as China, Japan and India started to decline," Somchai said.
Thailand has set a target of 19 million tourist arrivals this year, but is now unlikely to achieve this as a result of the floods, which have claimed 437 lives over the past three months and caused billions of dollars in damage.
During the first nine months, some 14.4 million foreign tourists visited Thailand, up 27 per cent year-on-year, according to the Kasikorn Research Centre, a private think tank.
The kingdom's tourism sector has been hard hit by a series of natural and man-made disasters over the past decade, including the 2003 SARS scare, the 2004 tsunami, the 2006 coup, followed by months of street protests in Bangkok in each of 2008, 2009 and 2010.
For a week in November-December 2008, Suvarnabhumi Airport was closed to all international flights after the so-called "yellow shirt" protesters seized the airport in their bid to force the government to resign.
