Pm Yingluck Orders All Budget Airlines To Fly From Don Mueang Airport

[PattayaParent]

That's all not the problem,if I travel to other countries like UAE,Malaysia,Singapore or back to Europe,the passport control takes 1-2minutes per person,sometimes less than that,here in Thailand it takes 3-5 min.i think Thai immigration officers are afraid to make a mistake,or maybe their computer is outdated

Never flown into a major airport in the US, have you? I waited for at least 15 minutes in the US citizens queue at San Francisco recently

I once waited 2 hours at LAX off a flight from Hawaii !!!!!

But what happens when DM floods again this year like it did just a few months ago?

And just a few days ago they were saying it was a shortage of immigration officers, how will moving international flights to DM solve that problem???

[OzMick]

If heading for the south, the obvious solution is to fly via KL. AA has flights to Phuket, Krabi, Had Yai and now Surat Thani. No congestion and much cheaper than "economy/budget" Bankok Air - should be renamed Ali Baba Air.

Don Muang is easy to get to/away from by train, dozen or so each day. There is a bridge over the highway from the mezzanine level. Coming from the south, get off at Bang Sue Junction and walk 50-60m to the other station. Too easy.

[anterian]

"would pay overtime to officials of Bt100,000 per day as incentive." What each?!!

[hkt83100]

[..]why not phase out the bloody rubber stamps?

Because rubber stamps work without electric. Some people cross the border by road/rail, and there is no UPS... (not the parcel service)

[lucjoker]

I came in 02.00h ,long rows on immigration,only 5 boots open ,thai boots closed .

I walked 300m to the next immigration ....nobody ! 5 boots open !

When i came closer ,they chased me away !

I had to go back to the crowded hall ??????Verry unfriendly !!!!!!

So in my opinion it is pure intimidation ,"you want to enter our country ? So we will teach you

who is the boss and you gone loose some time right now !"

Hope tourist stay away, and spend their money in some more friendly place !

[Harrykrabi]

Tourism in Thailand has a high point and a low point. What kind of dingbat decides to close down two thirds of the immigration booths in high season ? Its a new airport so I am sure the alleged renovations cannot have been that urgent to start immediately ? The few times in the past I have flown into DM airport I have met with similar delays in immigration followed by an absolutely horrendous journey from that a'port into the centre of BKK. Who wants to sit in traffic for hours after a long haul and slow passage through passport control ? I don't see any of this helping Thailands image as a worthwhile tourist destination.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Am I missing something, or does this stupid article not even make any mention of WHEN the government is expecting/asking/ordering the various "budget" airlines to make such a major change in their operations???

[avalonmick]

Explain to me how Thai Immigration has control over a 747 load of Chinese tourist arriving and none read or write Thai or English, good luck having your arrival card filled out and ready when you step in front of the officer. No matter how much the, all things Thai or wrong brigade complains there are just a few things that are beyond the control of immigration.

As LOS touts itself as a major tourist destination and draws significant revenue from 747s full of Chinese tourists, it should be right now implementing new technologies - such as in-flight immigration clearance - to speed up this process, NOT renovating a hall where people get to queue for up to an hour and fill out bits of paper that may, with any luck but knowing Thai systems probably do not, get properly filed so that Mr Chan's card lodged on entry on 16/3/2010 can be found in a few minutes and not a few months.

[hellodolly]

That's all not the problem,if I travel to other countries like UAE,Malaysia,Singapore or back to Europe,the passport control takes 1-2minutes per person,sometimes less than that,here in Thailand it takes 3-5 min.i think Thai immigration officers are afraid to make a mistake,or maybe their computer is outdated

Never flown into a major airport in the US, have you? I waited for at least 15 minutes in the US citizens queue at San Francisco recently

I don't think you campare paranoid USA immigration with other countries,I was a while ago in Miami,arrived from Frankfurt germany,immigration in Miami treats anybody like terrorist,on top dogs walking around and sniffing at u and ur bags,

Maybe you had been profiled. Done anything wrong lately?

I'd gladly sacrifice security for some minor delays.

What I won't sacrifice is my time because some officers didn't feel like working that day.

What security. They only check 3% of their container ships coming in to the states. What makes you think that treating every arriving passenger like they might be a terrorist is going to make you safe.

[xavierr]

Are there any rail links planned between the two airports?

A skytrain linking DM and Suvarnabhumi should have been built long ago. Cities having two airports have them to reduce traffic congestion.

An elevated railway would be much easier for passengers and it would not contribute to overloading Bangkok's unpredictable highway traffic.

I can't understand why there is so little talk about this.

[BookMan]

I think it's The Nation that has included Bangkok Air on this list. They are certainly not a low-cost carrier.

Overtime of 100,000 baht per day for officials?

Many people currently use Air Asia as a connecting airline and as others have said, it appears the only winners in this case are Thai Airways, if everything in the article is to be believed. Oh, and the taxi drivers!

There's no timescale mentioned and I personally hope they can find another way around this. The foreign budget airline mentioned by another poster would be better all round but of course there's not so many flights. There will be contract issues involved and surely the government cannot just force airlines out if they have bindiong contracts to be allowed to fly into Suvarnabhumi.

yes, the Bangkok post lists Air Asia, Nok, Orient as the 3 budget airlines.

Everyone knows bangkok Airways is a Boutique Airline!

[PhilipCook]

The timing of the closure was wrong, should be doing it at the lowest point of arrivals and departures combined, which here might be July.

[AsianAdvisor]

On Tuesday March 13th I flew to Hong Kong by Air Asia on their 6.30 am flight. I arrived at the airport at 4.00 am.

Some observations:

1 Air Asia check in is a horrendous experience in Bangkok even if you use their web check in service. You still have to queue.

2 Check in took 40 minutes even though I had no bags.

3 Presented myself at Immigration to find 2 Booths open - that is correct 2 Booths. The line queue was long and some Indian passengers - who are never known for their timeliness (lived there for 3 years) - were threatening a riot as I guess they were going to miss their flight.

4 After 20 minutes and a load of grumbling from other passengers, 2 more Booths were opened. I cleared Immigration in 40 minutes, one of the longest waits I have experienced. All I know that if you started grumbling at Heathrow, you would get a very firm reprimand from stern faced apparatnik.

Now I do not criticize Thailand. I like living here. I left England for other reasons in how Britain is governed which are far worse than the problems that I experience here so I am grateful, believe me. However, moving AirAsia from Suvarnabhum is extremely unhelpful given the relative lack of transport links at DM.

This may be the final push to get me to relocate to Hong Kong (sighs) as travelling from and to the SAR is a delight as everything works smoothly. As a frequent traveller, using the overpriced services of the other airlines on offer is not an attractive proposition.

[RegularReader]

A perfect solution would be to pick up Don Muang airport and place it next to the terminal at Swampy, for domestic passengers (like DM used to be), but as we all know we don't live in a perfect place and swampy also is far from perfect - outbound and inbound passengers bumping into each other as they arrive/depart.-, great plan !

What constitutes a budget airline ?

Several times I have traveled on Thai because the so-called budget airlines were more expensive.

I would also stay well clear of the airlines operating out of Don Muang. Its a nightmare to get to.

So IF the airlines do go back there - will they re-introduce the airport link and airport taxis again.

What a bloody mess !

Don Muang is not any more difficult to get to from some parts of Bangkok than Swampy.

We live in Don Muang, so for us the move back is perfect - 10mins travel as opposed to normally 1 hour along a rather scary road. But I'm being cheeky I know, because for anyone living down in the southern part of town, it is a trek. Just the same, it's indicative of the poor planning when the new airport was being built. They built a rail service which in itself was a good idea - but it doesn't go anywhere. Then the airport was not designed for growth. This meant once it over-reached its capacity these sorts of bottlenecks started to appear. Now everyone is blaming everyone else...

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

I don't have great sympathy for the airlines, but I think some of them must be feeling like ping-pong balls... Maybe someone can flesh this out better than me... But...

They were originally at DM... When when Swampy opened, most moved there...

But then there were the Swampy runway cracking/subsidence problems, and I think some moved back to DM for that, and later back to Swampy...

And then DM was closed by this last year's floods, and they moved to Swampy, and then just recently Nok and perhaps others moved back to DM upon its post flood reopening...

And now.. move again???

Edited March 16, 2012 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[cheshiremusicman]

If they could mann all the counters, I`m sure it would help.

I cannot understand how in the lords name they could close down two of the gates for renovation works at the same time. It has to be a drunk mans decision.

Totally agree. I have NEVER seen all the immigration desks in operation at the same time, never mind having the option of which set of immigration gates you can use. I know that in the main, this is related to where your baggage is expected to arrive; but I don't mind walking to the correct carousel if that makes things quicker. I always get the impression that the 'Immigration Officers' work ( if that is the correct terminology for what they do) at a snails pace just to be bloody awkward. In other words - we will make you wait, like it or not! Thai arrogance at its best.

Problem is, that we have no alternative if we wish to use this airport for our travels and please, please don't come back and tell me to move to another country. I like living in Thailand and have no wish to move elsewhere, but it this doesn't preclude me from seeing things as they are and commenting on them.

[bubba]

So if they are already short on immigration officers at Suvarnabhumi, where are even more going to come from to staff Don Muang?

[CockneyGit]

That's all not the problem,if I travel to other countries like UAE,Malaysia,Singapore or back to Europe,the passport control takes 1-2minutes per person,sometimes less than that,here in Thailand it takes 3-5 min.i think Thai immigration officers are afraid to make a mistake,or maybe their computer is outdated

3-5 mins...? If only......

Been through Heathrow or Gatwick lately..??

[grahamhc]

Is this to hope the "Hopewell" project back on its feet? Been a lot about it in the press recently.

Hopewell is those 15 year old abandoned concrete pillars (1000+ according to the news story) you see near DM, that were meant to be the super transport system.

Maybe more money is going in the trough

[saroq]

Explain to me how Thai Immigration has control over a 747 load of Chinese tourist arriving and none read or write Thai or English, good luck having your arrival card filled out and ready when you step in front of the officer. No matter how much the, all things Thai or wrong brigade complains there are just a few things that are beyond the control of immigration.

Explain to me how other countries manage to have the same 747 load of Chinese tourist arrive but still process them without the huge delays that are experienced in Bangkok.

[harrry]

WIll they have wheelchair accessible taxis for passengers with electric wheelchairs to connect flights?

[Joolz63]

Immigration lines are the problem, most people landing there are in transit heading for Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam and using the Low cost travellers to do so. Perhaps a ticket check booth in the transit area would sort the problem and put people straight to there onward flight gate area with no need to go through Thai imm.

I for one have flew in, queued up at imm, and then had to scurry all the way upstairs to check in to my LCC and consequently missed my flight.

[Pui]

As any frequent flyer will tell you the counters are simply unmanned. its as if the immigration staff are on strike at the moment. This didn't just happen becuase all of a sudden (In March!!!) the airport got busy...

I have a Fast Track and its normally 2-3 minutes. Even Fast Track is currently over 1 hour. They are actually selling 1 time only passes for fast track at 1000 baht a pop.

Today I canceled an international business trip. The airport is currently out of order.

Its as if someone somewhere has stuck a spanner in the works and until they get what they want, we will all have to suffer.

As a side note, how can an international airport take on renovation work to 2/3rds of its immigration counters and not have a projected completion date? That stinks, no way!

Edited March 16, 2012 by Pui

[grahamhc]

Just posting this info on a PI web forum and spelt Swampy as "Suwanabhumi". My Spellchecker told me to correct it to "Subhuman"!.

It appears that the Firefox guys who create the dictionary have been to Thailand

Edited March 16, 2012 by grahamhc

[waza]

What a way to run a country, miracle Thailand.

[frank2611]

Why not give the international the choise of what airport they wish to fly to. I would think Qantas would not care if the landing fees are cheaper. If service is similar why not put all dead end flights, Hong Kong/bangkok return over to DM same with Korean and Asiana. I would think at right price many airlines would change

[arco27]

How about if all international charter flights with their final destination BKK would arrive and depart at DM? This would stop huge hordes of group tourist from where ever clogging up the departure and arrival migration at swampy. Of course they also should man all their boots on all three gates according to demand.

I passed throu Swampy about 12 times last year and so far 5 times this year and I must be lucky, because I never had a problem. I generally go through the depatrure gate one hour befor the plane leaves and alway got on time to my departure gate. For me it would be terribly inconveniant if I had to change airport whenfor example I arrive from Ho Chi Minh and have to go on to Phuket. Changing Airport would add hours to the trip. One last word about AA check in which is impossibly slow, it is actually faster to check in at the airport then just dropping off your bags with a web check in. Me thinks AA are actually drowning in their own success and it will take a while to sort out their problems.

And finally Thai Airports are a pleasure compared to any US International Airport, I have stopped going to the US simply because I don't fancy being treated like a criminal or terrorist.

[egdirb]

Muppets.

So those with connecting flights have to travel between the two airports now.

[BigJohnnyBKK]

Practical solution - plan your travel in and out of Thailand so you fly the last overseas leg into Chiang Mai or Phuket, Samui etc.

If you can, get over your jet lag in nice natural surroundings.

The last leg into DM domestically will take less time than a midday Bangkok cross-town ride in a taxi.

[Thai at Heart]

How does redirecting domestic flights help immigration?