Thai Airways International is planning to increase services to Australia and India.
The Star Alliance carrier’s executive VP commercial, Pandit Chanapai, says in March the airline is increasing its Bangkok-Melbourne and Bangkok-Perth service to double-daily. Thai presently serves Melbourne 12-times-weekly and Perth five-times-weekly according to Innovata.
“We have put our best aircraft, the Boeing 777-300, onto the routes into Australia,” says Pandit, adding that the Perth route will also be getting a 777-300. Currently Thai serves Perth using Airbus A330-300s, says Innovata.
Pandit also says: “We are upping Bangalore to 10 flights a week, Hyderabad will be daily, Chennai will be daily …and there will be double daily for Mumbai and Delhi.”
He says these increases will occur in September 2008, the earliest time permitted under the India-Thailand air services agreement. The two countries signed a bilateral agreement in February 2006 which allowed for traffic rights to increase in stages.
According to Innovata Thai currently serves Bangkok-Bangalore seven-times-weekly, Bangkok-Hyderabad three-times-weekly, Bangkok-Chennai four-times-weekly, Bangkok-Delhi seven-times-weekly and Bangkok-Mumbai seven-times-weekly.
Pandit was speaking to ATI yesterday at an event in Beijing to promote Air China and Shanghai Airlines’ formal entry yesterday into Star Alliance.
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
Source: FlightGlobal.com
