Don Muang airport: Renovate and upgrade NOW!

[snoop1130]

Don Muang airport: Renovate and upgrade NOW!

 

 

Influential Thai media Thai Rath has called on the government to get their finger out and stop wasting time in upgrading and renovating Don Muang airport.

In a comment piece their columnist "Mae Look Jan" said that Don Muang was a crisis already in the making.

In 2017 some 38 million passengers passed through Bangkok's second largest airport of which 14 million were on international flights and 24 million domestic.

But in 2018 this was expected to rise to 42 million.

The airport was deemed to have had a capacity of just 30 million passengers a while back so this would now be exceeded by 12 million a year. 

The airport was bursting at the seams.

Soon there would be no place to stand - let alone sit at Don Muang.

The columnist called on a budget of 2 billion baht to be spent upgrading the airport - and decisions about this to be done quickly.

They suggested old buildings be pressed back into service as a third terminal.

And they also suggested radical improvements to parking at the airport and the traffic flow within it that was a mess. 

Thaivisa notes that just ten years ago there was talk of closing the airport for good after Suvarnabhumi opened. There was even mention of moving government offices into the terminal buildings.

This compares to today when the airport is expected to grow faster than both Suvarnabhumi and U-Tapao, stressed Mae Look Jan. 

Source: https://www.thairath.co.th/content/1225548

 

-- © Copyright Thai Visa News 2018-3-13

[BigBadGeordie]

Well done Thai Rath for raising this issue, impartially at this time, surely just out of public interest.

 

Just a few question, however;

 

Don Muang is owned by whom?

The 2 Billion Baht contract has been won by whom?

The parking franchise is run by whom?

The food/duty free franchise is run by whom?

 

 

And at the time prior to Suvarnabhumi opening, who was in government?

 

Please try harder Thai Rath.

[coulson]

1 hour ago, snoop1130 said:

The columnist called on a budget of 2 billion baht to be spent upgrading the airport - and decisions about this to be done quickly

Unfortunately the columnist appears to have the disease of stating the obvious.

 

Don Mueng has been upgraded sufficiently (within reason) for its domestic flights. They only burst at the seams during CNY and due to supporting infrastructure that cannot cope.

 

Suvarnhabhumi is going to be a bigger problem when the new Terminal opens, with the same immigration facility. It was never designed for expansion.

 

Master planning disaster. By the time AOT and TAT align themselves with reality, Thailand won't have as many tourists.  

[HiSoLowSoNoSo]

You would think that a country who depends on turism as much as Thailand do could get the basics together. When I first arrived here in the 80s Don Muang was good, since the 90's then everything has just been a slippery sloop. Malaysia and Singapore than behind Thailand are now like an other planet compared to the very tired Thai infrastructure.

[Rc2702]

Seems very different from just two years ago. I did manage to find the khao soi shops new premises though, panic over.

[Thian]

Here i came out of the smokingroom at Changi Singapore....look at the real tree's at the gates with the designerchairs.

 

Then i landed at Don Muang, here you see the smoking room.

 

It was so filthy that i decided to wait and smoke outside...but look there at the smoking area in hard rain!

 

Welcome to Thailand!

 

 

 

 

 

[dieter1]

"get their finger out and stop wasting time in upgrading and renovating Don Muang airport."

     for real ???

- off course they should have planed another big airport decades before

- off-course they should have built Suvarnabhumi  much much bigger (was at full capacity right from the beginning, The maximum capacity of Suvarnabhum was near the capacity of Don Muang ! AMAZIng ! You would assume, they would have built it at least with double capacity - but they did not))

but

- off-course they did not.

 

luckily,  Don Muang could been opened again and been operational without big problems.

 

 

so there is no alternative but to invest in this airport now.

A new airport needs 2 decades from starting planing till operation.

Just google how much growing in (international) air-trafic is to be expected in Thailand in the next 20 Years !

amazing!!!!

 

[Thian]

35 minutes ago, coulson said:

Unfortunately the columnist appears to have the disease of stating the obvious.

 

Don Mueng has been upgraded sufficiently (within reason) for its domestic flights. They only burst at the seams during CNY and due to supporting infrastructure that cannot cope.

 

Suvarnhabhumi is going to be a bigger problem when the new Terminal opens, with the same immigration facility. It was never designed for expansion.

 

Master planning disaster. By the time AOT and TAT align themselves with reality, Thailand won't have as many tourists.  

When you walk into don muang there are long long qeueu's right behind the doors...you even can't walk to the screens to have a look at them...people don't even understand where the qeueu's are leading to but just go standing in them...What a totall mess!!

 

And it's all crappy, filthy and very bad organised...even the screens at the gates don't show what the next flight is, you just have to hope you sit at the right gate.

 

What a big disappointment is Don Muang after coming back from Changi Singapore where EVERYTHING IS PERFECT!!...It's like a 6* hotel, the whole airport...Don Muang is like a studenthouse after being rented out for 100 years to 1000 different students.

[dieter1]

who wants to forgo the charm of the  third world country ! 

Landing in DonMuang reminds me of my first visits to Thailand.

Sweet memories !

I could tell long stories just about my adventures going from the airport  to my hotel

(using normal public  busses,  with wooden seats  no aircon ...

I liked it !

[gk10002000]

14 million on International flights?  I miss Don Muang.  One used to get a feel one was actually in Thailand when one arrived.  There were more Thai murals, sculptures etc.  BKK is too white and steel and aluminum, very sterile.

[gk10002000]

1 hour ago, dieter1 said:

who wants to forgo the charm of the  third world country ! 

Landing in DonMuang reminds me of my first visits to Thailand.

Sweet memories !

I could tell long stories just about my adventures going from the airport  to my hotel

(using normal public  busses,  with wooden seats  no aircon ...

I liked it !

Yep.  I did not travel as long ago as you did, but still, I miss the old nature of things.  When you arrived, you felt like you were really in a different place

[seajae]

we went through the airport on the weekend, they have actually removed the overpass from the main road going into the terminals and now have a single lane way before you get to the terminal that is a hotch potch of old roads and the traffic was backed up for quite a distance trying to use it. People  were getting out of the cars and walking for hundreds of metres to get to the terminals because traffic was at a stand still but they had to climb over barriers put up blocking access, to cars and people ,the ones organizing the airport upgrades couldnt organize a piss up in a brewery. Then when you get inside it is even worse, no directions for people to follow, going through the line ups trying to get past the xray machines is a nightmare, the so called people directing you dont have a clue, walls etc are water damaged and sagging, it looks disgusting. This is one huge shemozzle but then again so is Suvarnabhumi, unfortunately some thais seem to have no idea how to use common sense and forward planning, it applies to a lot of different things here but the airports are a major stuff up.

Edited March 13, 2018 by seajae

[lamyai3]

My first trips to Don Muang were from India in the mid 90s. Compared to the airports at the other end, it seemed like a paragon of cleanliness and sophistication. 

[j8k]

I pay more to avoid this crap hole airport and go in/out of Swampy instead. I also get to avoid Airasia too - bonus.

[Dave67]

Thai AirAsia Disgusting treatment of passengers Friday 9th flight to Saigon. I'm a seasoned traveller mainly for work well over 200 flights and I know exactly what AirAsia did and I will never fly with them again

 

Gate 3 Downstairs the crew boarded via bus, normally after the crew board you wait for 20 to 30 minutes before boarding. In this case, we boarded the bus 5 minutes after the crew, as usual, the bus was packed. After a drive of about 2 minutes, we stopped for 15 minutes and I thought the crew must be still preparing the Aircraft.

 

We pulled off and went back towards gate 3 and sat again for 15 minutes we then went back to the gate 3 and we were let off the bus After we got off passengers for a hong kong flight got onto the bus, which was the flight after ours on the board. When I asked a child working for AirAsia what happens and she bullshitted about that particular plane could not fly to Vietnam.

 

Hong Kong is a far more popular flight than Saigon and AirAsia want don't want to upset lucrative Chinese market so they herded us out the way., We waited another 2 hours for our flight to Saigon. As mentioned that's me and Air Asia finished

 

 

[mtls2005]

The primary issues which restrict flight ops:

 

runways too close together for simultaneous ops,

 

and the need to cross 3L/21R to get to 3R/21L

 

limit hourly departures and arrivals.

 

Throw in rainy season, and the occasional missed approaches, and you're not left with a lot of options: increase plane sizes (only one runway can be used for A380s/B747s), run 24H ops (nearly being done now).

 

Yes, you can improve ground handling, and passenger experiences.

 

I think they've got to expand SBIA/BKK double-time, and ramp up the UTP expansion.

[madmitch]

Bring back the brewpub!

[Bangkok Barry]

The fact that Swampy was supposed to replace Don Mueang and then had to be reopened and is now overflowing tells you all you need to know about Thai planning. Somehow they underestimated many tens of millions of passengers that would use the new airport which then had to be off-loaded to the old one. And now neither are adequate. They haven't got a clue. But that's the way everything runs in Thailand. It's like having children in charge. I often wonder how the country functions at all.

Edited March 14, 2018 by Bangkok Barry

[spidermike007]

12 hours ago, Thian said:

Here i came out of the smokingroom at Changi Singapore....look at the real tree's at the gates with the designerchairs.

 

Then i landed at Don Muang, here you see the smoking room.

 

It was so filthy that i decided to wait and smoke outside...but look there at the smoking area in hard rain!

 

Welcome to Thailand!

 

 

 

 

 

Quite a contrast. The TAT is working feverishly to increase the number of arrivals, and as always, no thought is being paid to how to support that increase, how to improve the general infrastructure, services, immigration services, etc. The country is losing the higher spending Western tourists by the year, and they are being replaced with lower spending Chinese tourists. I am looking at the ratings on Skytrax, and it is quite low. As an example, here is a random review of the airport:

 

"not a good place to be"

B Moore (New Zealand) 10th March 2018

✅ Trip Verified | I have travelled in and out of Don Muang airport at least 20 times. Maybe twice I have had a reasonably quick arrival or departure experience, every other time it is chaotic. Definitely ranks as one of the busiest airports and not a good place to be. If you can avoid it at all costs, unless you can get a flight in or out when its in a quiet patch. Anybody that reviews it and says its good either a) Doesn't travel through here much or Is being paid to write good things or c) Lucked out in a quiet patch or d) You are Thai in which you have eGate and its quick. Come on Thailand, you're not doing visitors to your country a good service by having such appalling airport facilities. Staff are just overworked and unhappy, open more kiosks, look after your guests, land of smiles right?

http://www.airlinequality.com/airport-reviews/bangkok-don-muang-airport/   And here is a random review of Swampy. I did not realize how poorly that airport was rated:   "Terrible service" P Tan (Singapore) 21st February 2018 ✅ Trip Verified | Long queuing times all the way. Terrible service. Queuing at check in, then at security control, then at passport control. A complete review of the processes should be conducted. For a country like Thailand where tourism is so important, it is astonishing that the main airport offers such a sad spectacle.       http://www.airlinequality.com/airport-reviews/bangkok-suvarnabhumi-airport/     Little P. Moving Thailand backwards at a breath taking, alarming, and astonishing pace. Definitely not making Thailand great again.

Edited March 14, 2018 by spidermike007

[Thian]

22 minutes ago, spidermike007 said:

 

Little P. Moving Thailand backwards at a breath taking,

alarming, and astonishing pace. Definitely not making

Thailand great again.

Well the general does absolutely nothing to improve the airports, and what they do (like that 50 baht taxiservice-superlong qeueu) doesn't work...The skytrain to Swampy even stopped operating iirc and if it works it might just break down and passengers are locked with closed doors in full sun for many hours.

 

but those chinese groups on Don Muang are still a pain in the butt, i was so lucky to have them in the plane i booked and they ALL started pushing like idiots when the gate finally opened...Another farang and me were in the mess but he got tired of it and walked straight through the checks without even showing any ticket, he held his suitcase above his head and they just let him board without questions.

 

I pushed them back and told them to not jump the qeueu but all those chinese got very nervous when we could board, oh so scared they would loose their tourleader...since i'm much taller than them they didn't dare to push me again but boy are they rude.

 

If my European friends/family want to visit me and my wife we meet in Singapore from now on, much better for everyone and absolutely no stress there. Quality tourists who don't mind to pay a little more should all go there since it's SOO much better than Thailand.

 

Don Muang also needs many more shops to buy some food, there were very long qeueu's at that S&P to buy a sandwich for 120 baht..but there's not much else so be hungry or go there.

 

I hope more travellers make pictures of crappy Don Muang so it will get renovated very soon..how dare they luring quality tourists to let them endup in that filthy mess.

 

 

[spidermike007]

4 minutes ago, Thian said:

Well the general does absolutely nothing to improve the airports, and what they do (like that 50 baht taxiservice-superlong qeueu) doesn't work...The skytrain to Swampy even stopped operating iirc and if it works it might just break down and passengers are locked with closed doors in full sun for many hours.

 

but those chinese groups on Don Muang are still a pain in the butt, i was so lucky to have them in the plane i booked and they ALL started pushing like idiots when the gate finally opened...Another farang and me were in the mess but he got tired of it and walked straight through the checks without even showing any ticket, he held his suitcase above his head and they just let him board without questions.

 

I pushed them back and told them to not jump the qeueu but all those chinese got very nervous when we could board, oh so scared they would loose their tourleader...since i'm much taller than them they didn't dare to push me again but boy are they rude.

 

If my European friends/family want to visit me and my wife we meet in Singapore from now on, much better for everyone and absolutely no stress there. Quality tourists who don't mind to pay a little more should all go there since it's SOO much better than Thailand.

 

Don Muang also needs many more shops to buy some food, there were very long qeueu's at that S&P to buy a sandwich for 120 baht..but there's not much else so be hungry or go there.

 

I hope more travellers make pictures of crappy Don Muang so it will get renovated very soon..how dare they luring quality tourists to let them endup in that filthy mess.

 

 

I hear alot of complaints about the Chinese behavior. And I think some things should be taken into account. I am not waging a defense of the Chinese tourist here. But, I do prefer them to the Russians, on so many levels. They are accustomed to dealing with 1,400,000,000 people. So, everywhere they go, they deal with enormous crowds, and really, really stupid lines. So, they get pushy. We interpret that as rude. They probably see it as tactics for survival. And the other consideration is that we are not seeing the whole of China. The current pattern of attracting tours, means that we are seeing the relatively poor Chinese. They are paying next to nothing for these package tours, and Thailand is attracting the dregs of society, relatively speaking. Not smart policy on any level. But it is what it is. 

 

In my opinion compared to the droves of surly, nasty, hard hearted, hostile Russians I used to deal with, the Chinese are jovial, fun loving, and easy to deal with. Sure they are pushy, and they fart and burp alot in public, and you have the occasional guy who urinates on a statue. But not bad, compared to the Russkies I used to deal with, in my opinion. 

[Bangkok Barry]

2 minutes ago, spidermike007 said:

I hear alot of complaints about the Chinese behavior. And I think some things should be taken into account. I am not waging a defense of the Chinese tourist here. But, I do prefer them to the Russians, on so many levels. They are accustomed to dealing with 1,400,000,000 people. So, everywhere they go, they deal with enormous crowds, and really, really stupid lines. So, they get pushy. We interpret that as rude. They probably see it as tactics for survival. And the other consideration is that we are not seeing the whole of China. The current pattern of attracting tours, means that we are seeing the relatively poor Chinese. They are paying next to nothing for these package tours, and Thailand is attracting the dregs of society, relatively speaking. Not smart policy on any level. But it is what it is. 

 

In my opinion compared to the droves of surly, nasty, hard hearted, hostile Russians I used to deal with, the Chinese are jovial, fun loving, and easy to deal with. Sure they are pushy, and they fart and burp alot in public, and you have the occasional guy who urinates on a statue. But not bad, compared to the Russkies I used to deal with, in my opinion. 

 

Thailand attracts the low end of society. I have witnessed the way Chinese act both at a hotel I stay at in Dubai and at the airport, and not once have I seen any of them act like many of the Chinese do in Thailand. And this is over weeks and weeks of observation at my hotel.

 

[Nobbie49]

The fact that Swampy was supposed to replace Don Mueang and then had to be reopened and is now overflowing tells you all you need to know about Thai planning. Somehow they underestimated many tens of millions of passengers that would use the new airport which then had to be off-loaded to the old one. And now neither are adequate. They haven't got a clue. But that's the way everything runs in Thailand. It's like having children in charge. I often wonder how the country functions at all.

It doesn’t


Sent from my iPhone using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

[Montnoveau]

20 hours ago, dieter1 said:

A new airport needs 2 decades from starting planing till operation.

 

Yes, ask the people in Berlin about the Brandenburg Airport! "After almost 15 years of planning construction began in 2006. Originally planned to open in October 2011, the airport has encountered a series of delays and cost overruns. A new TÜV report published in November 2017 suggested that the opening could even be delayed until 2021."

[overherebc]

9 hours ago, madmitch said:

Bring back the brewpub!

Is that the one where you sit outside and have a smoke with your beer?

[madmitch]

12 minutes ago, overherebc said:

Is that the one where you sit outside and have a smoke with your beer?

No. It was a huge pub that overlooked the whole check-in area. At the time it was one of the best places in Bangkok to get a decent beer.

[overherebc]

4 minutes ago, madmitch said:

No. It was a huge pub that overlooked the whole check-in area. At the time it was one of the best places in Bangkok to get a decent beer.

Last time in Singapore changing flights I asked one of the airport customer service guys where the nearest smoking room was. He said follow me and on the way told me that the reason the smoking areas are many was because the PM at the time who was an ex-smoker wanted quite a few because he understood that it helped smokers feel relaxed before their flight as he felt the same way when he was a smoker.

That's why they are open air and always nicely maintained. His words not mine.

[ChiangMaiLightning2143]

Here i came out of the smokingroom at Changi Singapore....look at the real tree's at the gates with the designerchairs.
 
Then i landed at Don Muang, here you see the smoking room.
 
It was so filthy that i decided to wait and smoke outside...but look there at the smoking area in hard rain!
 
Welcome to Thailand!
 
 
 
 
 

You smoke cigarettes?

[Thian]

9 minutes ago, ChiangMaiLightning2143 said:

You smoke cigarettes?

No way, i smoke mostly elephantdung in my pipe but since that's not allowed to bring in the plane i had some pubic hairs from a young goat to smoke for my trip. But they were a bit humid from the singaporese climate so i asked those 3 boys in orange shirts to blow in my pipe while i lit it, that worked fine mate.

[buick]

don muang for domestic flights is great.  i use it every month.  check in using a kiosk (no wait at all).  through security in less than 10 minutes.  terminal 2 is nearly fully renovated, still some restrooms that are old style. 

 

i would never consider using don muang for international travel.  no thank you.