Route of the month - London to Bangkok

Alex McWhirter looks at new London-Bangkok options Thailand is one of the most popular South East Asian destinations for European travellers during the winter months. Just don’t tell our big airlines. Finnair excepted, every national airline has either cut its Bangkok services or at best left them unchanged over the past decade, despite the growth in passenger numbers. According to the OAG (the Official Airline Guide), between early 2001 and the same period this year, KLM cut the number of Bangkok flights out of Amsterdam from 11 to seven a week, while from Frankfurt, Lufthansa now flies seven times a week compared with ten previously. Others, such as Air France and Swiss, have stagnated, while Alitalia has scrapped its service. In 2001 Alitalia flew four times a week out of Rome in conjunction with Qantas. Today, neither airline plies the route. Out of London Heathrow, not only has British Airways cut its Bangkok flights from ten to seven a week but, because its service continues to Sydney, it gives priority to Down Under passengers. Qantas, which flies alongside BA to Bangkok (each carrier operates one flight a day), acts likewise. For commercial reasons, BA will not divulge how many of its passengers disembark in Bangkok. But for both BA and Qantas, it could be as little as 50 to 100 people per flight (the trick is to board enough London-Bangkok passengers to fill the seats of those departing Bangkok for Sydney), which is hardly worthy of such an important destination. With so few seats to sell, both carriers are far and away the most expensive operators on the route. A British Airways spokesman says the airline would not consider adding a Bangkok terminator (a flight ending in the city) to boost capacity unless it believed the route would be profitable. Seemingly, BA and the European carriers mentioned above believe there are simply not enough passengers buying profitable first and business class tickets to justify adding more services. So who is meeting demand? Finnair is a shining exception. The Helsinki-based carrier is regularly praised by readers on our online forum (businesstraveller.com/discussion) because it takes the Great Circle route to Asia, so the overall flight time is competitive, and it now departs 14 times a week compared with four flights in 2001. Thai Airways and the Taiwanese carriers, Eva Air and China Airlines, have also stepped in to meet demand. Thai has increased services and Eva Air has boosted flights out of Heathrow and Amsterdam, while China Airlines flies more frequently from the latter. Other carriers increasing flights (and wooing European passengers) include Turkish Airlines and India’s Jet Airways. But, judging by their meteoric expansion, it is the likes of Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways who are taking those passengers that British Airways, Air France, KLM, Lufthansa and the like do not want. The Gulf carriers offer connections both from Europe’s main hubs and its secondary gateways. It is not easy for point-to-point carriers to compete. If you were heading to Bangkok from Manchester or Newcastle, would you prefer Emirates via Dubai or BA via Heathrow, bearing in mind that in London you will need to change from T5 to T3? (BA’s joint-venture flights with Qantas depart from T3.) In ten years, Emirates has boosted its Dubai-Bangkok flights from seven to 27 a week, while from Doha, Qatar has gone from three to a whopping 21. But that’s not the whole story, as the capacity per flight has leapt. In 2001, Emirates was operating B777-200s, which can carry up to 346 people. Of today’s four daily flights, three are rostered for larger B777-300s, while the fourth is operated by a 489-seat A380. Over the same period, Qatar has gone from using 250-seat A300-600s (now retired from the fleet) to rostering 335-seat B777-300s for two flights and a smaller 305-seat A330 for the third daily service. Emirates is the only carrier to operate the A380 into Bangkok. The superjumbo operates flight EK384 out of Dubai at 0315, returning from Bangkok as EK385 at 0105. (The A380 continues from Bangkok to Hong Kong.) Passengers flying Emirates from Heathrow, Manchester and Paris Charles de Gaulle via Dubai can book the A380 for all sectors, although connections may not be perfect. According to online agent opodo.co.uk, BA and Qantas have the highest fares out of London. Besides the direct flights with Thai and Eva Air, there is a good choice of indirect services with prices varying according to when you book and the quality of the carrier.