Thai Airways presents new recovery plan for board approval

Thai Airways president Sumeth Damrongchaitham says the national carrier will submit a 2020-2025 rehabilitation plan to the Board of Directors in January, with a separate purchasing plan for new aircraft also being put forward.

The Nation reports that the rehabilitation plan will consist of twenty projects and four key measures. One of these will be to increase the revenue derived from optional extras, such as in-flight catering and advanced seat selection – a situation common when purchasing tickets from discount airlines.

Thai Airways has been an enormous loss-maker for the Thai government for a decade with annual losses increasing over the years. For the first 9 months of 2019 the airline publicly acknowledged losses of 11 billion baht.

Sumeth says the option of “preferred seat” selection, whereby passengers pay more for a seat with extra legroom and space, has proved popular and is expected to bring in an additional 70 million baht a month at least.

“Also, there are measures to improve the carrier’s capacity by using technology, and to control and reduce the organisation’s expenditure by applying a new aircraft management plan, ‘Plan Buy Fly Sale’. This plan will allow the organisation to buy or sell aircraft at any time, without waiting for them to be discharged or falling into deterioration.”

In addition to the rehabilitation plan, Thai Airways executives will present a buying plan for 38 new aircraft at a maximum cost of 156 million baht.

The airline is the second-largest shareholder of the low-cost carrier Nok Air with a 21.80% stake, and it launched a regional carrier under the name Thai Smile in the middle of 2012 using new Airbus A320 aircraft.

SOURCE: The Nation