Thai Air Asia says new Covid outbreak has destroyed business

[reader]

From  The Thiager

The executive chairman of Asia Aviation, the largest shareholder in Thai Air Asia, says the Covid-19 resurgence has “destroyed the low-cost carrier”. Tassapon Bijleveld says that, even without a national lockdown, bookings have plummeted.

“Travel sentiment has plunged lower than last year. This is different this time because people are voluntarily skipping their travel plans even without a nationwide lockdown order from the government.”

According to a Bangkok Post report, Tassapon does not expect things to improve next month. Despite the Thai government introducing extra holidays over the Chinese New Year period, Tassapon predicts that the new wave of Covid-19 will prevent most domestic tourists from travelling.

“This could be the quietest Chinese New Year we’ve ever had.”

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From The Nation

Bangkok Airways suspends flights, closes ticketing office due to new Covid wave

In response to the new wave of Covid-19 infections and the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration’s announcement urging people to avoid inter-provincial travel, Bangkok Airways on Friday suspended a few flights, including Samui-Phuket and Phuket-Hat Yai from January 10-31.

[Guest]

I've been looking into some domestic travel, possibly to the south of Thailand.

1. There are no covid restrictions that prevent me leaving Chonburi.

2 The only flight out of Utapao seems to go to Chiang Mai.

3 The next obvious solution is to fly from Suvarnabhumi or Don Mueang.  However, those are in "RED" provinces, so presumably I'm then at risk of being classed as arriving from red provinces, which would then mean I have higher restrictions on entering provinces ?  These seem to vary from registering to 14 day quarantine.

Is anyone familiar with that ?

I'm not particularly keen on other work arounds like flying to South Thailand via Chiang Mai.

[10tazione]

It seems all info about provincial travel restrictions is in Thai only.

These should be the entry rules for Chaing Mai:

https://cmcovid19.com/immigration

Maybe someone can help translate? - But anyway as far as I can understand it is out of date (10 jan) and Pattaya is still a red zone while I think it is now an orange zone.

[PeterRS]

I have little sympathy with Thai Air Asia. Every business concern must have a disaster scenario playbook. If not, then to have disaster management consultants on a retainer. Such disasters for an airline can include various types of crashes with some or total loss of life to forced grounding. I accept that the present pandemic is unprecedented. But the red flags had been flying with SARS in 2003. One of the worst airlines hit was Cathay Pacific which quickly flew many of its aircraft to a desert airstrip in Australia and had them out of action until air travel out of Hong Kong started to resume.

If the Executive Chairman of Asia Aviation had not heard of second, third and fourth waves of covid 19 and their various effects, sometimes occurring months after the end of the first wave, then he does not deserve to be in his job.