Thai Authorities are welcoming all flight companies to use their military airbase U-Tapao near Pattaya, Austrian Airways has now sent six busses with a total of 250 passengers to the airbase, from where they will leave tonight.
One of the passengers is 29 year old Caroline Vagner Rosenstand from Denmark:
“We were told to meet at Hotel Rama Garden today at noon, where we would be checked in. Our names were ticked off at a list and we had our luggage registered. They said it would take three hours to get there by bus. Then we will fly to Vienna tonight,” says Caroline.
Flight companies losing money
SAS is also working at full throttle to find similar solutions.
“We’re working on several options. The problem with U-Tapao is that it has very little capacity,” Håkan Olsson, General Manager for SAS in South East Asia, says and continues:
“In the end it is the air base authorities who decide where the different companies can departure from.”
The Danish chartering business continuously fly tourists to and from Thailand, according to Stig Elling, Sales Director in Star Tour.
The flights that should have landed in Bangkok are sent to Phuket or other airports instead. This means however that tourists going to Bangkok have to spend two days in busses going back and forth.
Flight companies are losing a lot of money because of the closed airports. They therefore do whatever they can to come up with solutions like Austrian Airways’.
