Thailand predicts a million passengers to catch flights during Songkran festival

Airports of Thailand, or AoT, expects about a million air travellers to transit through its 6 airports during Songkran this week. The estimate includes both international and domestic passengers who will catch flights to, from and around Thailand. Since the government scrapped the pre-travel PCR test requirement on April 1, the AoT says that’s the reason the number of travellers entering the country has noticeably increased.

During the first 7 days of April, around 895,000 people flew through Phuket, Hat Yai, Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai and Bangkok’s two airports, Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang. The 6 airports recorded more than 8,200 flights in the first week of the month, averaging around 1,180 flights per day. Of last week’s travellers, 202,280 were international, while nearly 692,500 were domestic, for impressive increases of 39% and 14%, respectively.

Flights are are projected to further increase during the Thai New Year (starts April 13), with more than 9,300 flights expected this week — a 14% increase from this time last year. That figure includes some 2,500 international flights and 6,800 domestic flights, for a 123% increase and 2% decrease over last year, respectively.

To accommodate the increase in passengers, airlines are filling more seats while increasing flights. According to the AoT, Thailand saw an average of nearly 1,180 international flights per day in the first week of April, for a total of more than 8,200 flights, up 5% from March. Meanwhile, domestic flights also increased 15%.

Even though the current rate of arrivals are slowly picking up, the approx. 10,000 or so international arrivals per day are still less than 10% of the pre-Covid traffic into Thailand. In 2019 Thailand averaged some 109,000 international per day.

SOURCE: Bangkok Post