No plans to make passengers pay more for improvements at Thai airports, says AOT

[Jonathan Fairfield]

No plans to make passengers pay more for improvements at Thai airports, says AOT

 

 

The head of the Airports of Thailand PCL has said there are no plans to make passengers pay for improvements to their airports. 

 

Development projects at the AOT's six airports in Thailand, all international, will be paid for by the money collected from airlines for each passenger who flies through them. 

 

Charges levied directly on passengers to use Thai airports were abolished some years ago and replaced by a 100 baht domestic charge and a 700 baht international charge per passenger. These fees are incorporated into flight tickets.

 

The AOT runs Suvarnabhumi, Don Muang, Phuket, Chiang Mai, Hat Yai and Mae Fa Luang airport in Chiang Rai. 

 

Chief Nitinai Sirisamanthakarn was speaking in a wide ranging interview to The Bangkok Insight on the occasion of the upcoming 40th anniversary of the AOT on July 1st. 

 

Nitinai admitted that service at the airports was not up to expectations at the moment but this was because the airports could not currently cope with the traffic. 

 

Nitinai promised better service in the future with no additional charges to passengers. Passengers were told "not to worry in the long term - things would improve".

 

A satellite terminal attached to the existing buildings (Terminal 1) at Suvarnabhumi will be able to handle 10-15 million more passengers per year and will be fully operational in the final quarter of next year. 

 

Building word will be completed by April 2020.

 

Further expansion will be made if plans for Terminal 2 at Suvanabhumi are approved. This will be a 4.3 billion baht project and will allow for an extra 40 million passengers per year at Suvarnabhumi. 

 

Don Muang is being upgraded and enlarged for domestic traffic with a 2024 finish date.

 

Phuket International Airport will see traffic increased to 10.5 million passengers with work currently underway expected to be completed by 2022. 

 

Work is also underway in Chiang Mai and elsewhere. 

 

AOT profits have seen a rise for the last four years and the fifth year is expected to follow suit. Their stock price is also booming. 

 

Wikipedia listed the company as the most valuable airport operator in the world in 2018.

 

But The Bangkok Insight said that is all very well but passengers are demanding better services at the nation's airports and don't care about their profits. 

 

Source: Bangkok Insight

 

-- © Copyright Thai Visa News 2019-06-25

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[geoffbezoz]

The word missing from the headline perhaps is "YET"

[legend49]

Work is also underway in Chiang Mai and elsewhere. 

 

At CNX??? Fake news! Start with an adequate parking at the airport, its always full, double and triple parked vehicles.

[upena]

But, tourism is down.

[Emdog]

Plans? We don't need no stinkin' plans!

It's in their DNA

[yokat]

In 2017 more than 75M international passengers paid 700 bahts each and 57M local passengers paid 100baht. That's more than 58 billions bahts just for the passenger service charge. To this you can add the landing charges that amount to thousands of baht for each of the 800k+ flights. There is also the juicy 15B bahts that the duty free operator promised to aot.

 

They should have plenty of money to invest without needing to increase the existing charges.

 

source : https://www.airportthai.co.th/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Annual-Airport-2017.pdf
https://www.caat.or.th/en/archives/25433

Edited June 25, 2019 by yokat

[Ulic]

This guy is a clown. Passengers already do pay for all improvements. AOT is the most profitable company in Thailand. There is already plenty of money to pay for any infrastructure upgrades. That said, if you want to increase profits even further, make upgrades (needed or not) charge airport users (especially international travelers) an increased fee, and even once the improvements are fully paid for just leave the fee. Extra profits. This is the model used in Canada and we now have the most expensive airports in the world.

[dcnx]

Usually the opposite happens of what they say. 

[jerojero]

Hope they put some decent air con in Terminal 2, this time. Swampy's is simply terrible!

[hotchilli]

19 hours ago, Jonathan Fairfield said:

The head of the Airports of Thailand PCL has said there are no plans to make passengers pay for improvements to their airports. 

Odd statement to make when the only income comes from passengers tickets sales?