PHUKET SELECTED TO BE AIRASIA REGIONAL HUB
Low cost carrier Thai AirAsia has announced that it will begin direct flight services to Phuket Island from several new major cities in the region starting by the end of the year.
There will be 5 aircrafts based at Phuket International Airport as part of the plan to establish Phuket as an aviation hub.
The cities include Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Bali, Ho Chi Minh and Chiang Mai.
The first of the new flights will be in November.
Thai AirAsia expects the project to add an additional one million passengers this year.
Last year, 4,2 million people flew with the airline, 55 percent of these were Asian nationals.
‘Some have questioned how we can expect such an increase with the current state of the economy, but we already reserved these planes so we will have to rely on marketing to get more people to travel to Thailand’ Thai AirAsia CEO Tassapon Bijleveld said.
Thai AirAsia opened a booking center in Patong in April this year and has plans to open another in Phuket City. There is also a ticket booth at Tesco-Lotus on the bypass road.
Bhuritt Maswongsa, vice president for marketing of the Phuket Tourist Association (PTA), said the news was very positive for Phuket, which was recovering well after successfully hosting the Asean Foreign Ministers’ meeting which was held in the Phuket Laguna area in Cherng Talay in July.
The PTA has worked hard for years to establish Phuket as a third regional hub for Southeast Asia after Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok and Changi Airport in Singapore, he said.
The new flights will allow passengers from places like Indonesia and Brunei, amongst others, to transit through Phuket to catch long-haul flights to destinations in Europe and North America.
The PTA is also pushing Thai Airways International (THAI) to launch a Frankfurt to Phuket route twice a week, either directly or via Bangkok.
THAI currently offers direct flights to Phuket only from Hong Kong, Narita Airport in Japan, and Perth, Australia.
The PTA is also urging THAI to resume direct flights from Singapore.
THAI stopped that service a long time ago, claiming it could not operate the route at a profit. However, there are currently three other carriers offering a total of nine flights daily from Phuket to Singapore.
As mentioned earlier this week, Virgin Blue’s launch of direct flights from Perth, Brisbane and Sydney in Australia is another boon to Phuket tourism and in relation to that to the Phuket Real Estate industry.
Mr. Bhuritt Maswongsa mentioned that all incoming flights are full and that Phuket Island is doing better than Pattaya and Chiang Mai, which are still struggling with the number of tourists.
Source: Phuket Gazette
