Thai govt wants to scrap “open-skies”

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  • Anonymous
    Guest

    AMcWhirter
    Participant

    Article in today’s Bangkok Post says that the Thai government wants to scrap its countries open-skies policy to ensure aviation safety.

    There have been concerns about airline safety, especially for the lesser-known Thai airline companies, but also Thai Airways itself is losing market share to all these foreign carriers and especially the Gulfies.

    As I’ve mentioned before AUH-BKK is understood to be Etihad’s busiest route.

    The price of air travel is related to seat capacity and the amount of competition.

    So if flights are restricted then one might reasonable expect fares in all classes to increase.

    http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/general/570275


    rferguson
    Participant

    Not at all surprised by this. Thai Airways must be suffering massively on european flights by the gulf carriers and within asia by the LOCO’s. It’s known yields are not good on european – Bangkok sectors as the traffic is primarily leisure throw into the mix the ME3 and it can’t be pretty. Most of the european carriers have scaled back their europe – BKK flights for the same reason.

    However, it seems that the Thai Govt wants to take the easy way out. It’s well known that Thai Airways is bloated, managed with government interference and also flies a lot of long haul ‘vanity’ routes. It also has to be questioned whether they ever needed the A380. Sound familiar? It’s almost exactly the same situation MH found themselves in (even before the two disasters) and Thai could do with a restructure a la MH.


    AMcWhirter
    Participant

    rferguson –

    True. As for TG, I forgot about the traffic it must have lost to the budget regional airlines and also the mainland Chinese carriers. The latter are active in the cheap ticket London-Bangkok market even though flying via CAN is a back-haul.

    As for the European routes, TG is cutting both flights and capacity to several major cities as BT has reported.

    http://www.businesstraveller.com/news/101303/thai-airways-trims-flights-to-europe


    SimonS1
    Participant

    I don’t really get the link between open skies and safety.

    If there are concerns about safety then the regulator there needs to up its game and not approve the dodgy airlines. If it’s about competition then the govt needs to shape up the airline, cut out the vanity routes and interference referred to above.

    Ending open skies just smacks of protectionism really.


    TheRealBabushka
    Participant

    SimonS1,

    Duh! It’s a ruse, straight out of the playbook of the trade union movement. I wish they would try to be more creative at least!


    rferguson
    Participant

    It looks like the Dutch govt wants to put the brakes on the ME3 expanding at AMS also. The article below quotes a govt minister as saying no more slots will be granted to the ME3.

    There are also comments from the Air France-KLM CEO about the threat of the ME3 – a little ironic considering KL and AMS has promoted itself as one of the biggest ‘via’ hubs in europe!

    http://www.arabianbusiness.com/dutch-gov-t-blocks-gulf-carriers-expansion-at-amsterdam-s-schiphol-airport-593530.html#.VWL6uU9Vikp


    Alexthegreat
    Participant

    I cant believe EK will be that happy as they use BKK as a mini hub!


    Flightlevel
    Participant

    If they can’t take the heat they should get out of the kitchen not close it down!Sad really because a more efficient airline benefits everyone & both Thai & KLM have their own unique selling points & should be able enough!

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