Phuket welcomes 6,730 flights in December
High season has arrived in Phuket, as the airport schedule lists 6,730 flights this month. The average number of flights per day throughout the month of December will reach 217, up from about 200 in November. (The busiest day in November saw 219 flight land with 10,467 passengers arriving.) Some 3,000 of those flights are international arrivals, while 3,730 flights are scheduled from domestic carriers within Thailand.
Over the last 7 months, the Phuket International Airport has welcomed just under one million travellers. Between May and November, 959,217 people landed on the island. Just shy of 250,000 passengers arrived on international flights last month alone, averaging about 8,165 people each day. And that number does not include people who had a layover in Bangkok where they went through the immigration Control process before connecting on flights to Phuket.
Qatar Airways has the most number of flights arriving in Phuket followed by Singapore Airlines. But Russian airlines have the highest total number of flights arriving on the island. India and Kazakhstan are tied for second place. In November, 63,357 people landed from Russia, compared with 29,263 from India, and 10,659 from Kazakhstan.
A total of 38 different foreign airlines are operating flights into Phuket this month according to The Phuket News. The top 11 are listed below, as well as six domestic airlines:
| INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS | |||
| AIRLINE | NUMBER OF FLIGHTS | ORIGINATION CITY | |
| 1 | Qatar Airways | 70 | Doha, Bangkok |
| 2 | Singapore Airlines | 56 | Singapore |
| 3 | Go First Airlines | 52 | Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata |
| 4 | Aeroflot Russian Airlines | 48 | Moscow, Krasnoyarsk, Vladivostok, Novosibirsk |
| 5 | Scat Airlines | 44 | Astana, Almaty, Taraz, Shymkent |
| 6 | Air Asia Berhad | 42 | Kuala Lumpur |
| 7 | Azur Air | 40 | Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Khabarovsk, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Ufa, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Perm, Kazan |
| 8 | Scoot Tiger Airways | 32 | Singapore |
| 9 | Etihad Airways | 28 | Abu Dhabi, BKK |
| 9 | Emirates Airlines | 28 | Dubai |
| 9 | Indigo Airlines | 28 | Mumbai, Delhi |
| DOMESTIC FLIGHTS | |||
| AIRLINE | NUMBER OF FLIGHTS | ORIGINATION CITY | |
| 1 | Thai AirAsia | 252 | Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Khon Kaen, Udon Thani |
| 2 | Bangkok Airways | 169 | Bangkok, Samui, Hat Yai, U-Tapao |
| 3 | Thai Smile Airways | 154 | Bangkok |
| 4 | Thai VietJet | 152 | Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai |
| 5 | Nok Air | 56 | Bangkok, Ubon Ratchathani |
| 6 | Thai Lion Air | 42 | Bangkok |
