One Airport Policy for Bangkok Trashed

[Guest fountainhall]

I now have a new option - Chiangmai direct to Seoul via Korean Air

 

With Dragonair having commenced 4 flights a week to Hong Kong, residents in or near Chiang Mai going to the US now have that option as well.

 

At the rate traffic is increasing into and out of Suvarnabhumi, the AOT has no option. Either they start now expanding the airport so it is capable of handling 70+ million passengers per year - or they have two airports. The expansion phase about to start will take it only to 60 million. With present throughput at around 51 million and increasing fast, it will still be at saturation point when it is completed! It doesn't take much to figure that out!

[KhorTose]

With Dragonair having commenced 4 flights a week to Hong Kong, residents in or near Chiang Mai going to the US now have that option as well.

 

 

Yes, they start July 1st, but only 4 flights per week. Their schedule for July and September:

 

 

KA233 Chiang Mai – Hong Kong 18:20 22:20 Wednesday, Sunday

KA233 Chiang Mai – Hong Kong 18:30 22:30 Thursday, Saturday

KA232 Hong Kong - Chiang Mai 15:05 17:10 Wednesday, Saturday

KA232 Hong Kong - Chiang Mai 14:00 16:05 Thursday, Sunday

[Guest fountainhall]

Orient Thai, which only a few weeks ago was saying it would never move back, has now agreed to do so and will transfer some flights next week. Thai Air Asia is expected to follow suit eventually.

 

The discounts offered by the government are especially sweet in the next few months because the government is keen to get the lccs to move now. Once the east runway repairs at Suvarnabhumi are complete around August 9, work will start on the west one - meaning mostly single runway operation will remain in effect until early October.

 

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/business/Orient-Thai-welcomes-return-to-Don-Mueang-30184567.html

http://www.bangkokpo...e-to-don-mueang

[KhorTose]

Great airport. According to Pattaya One (yes, i know not a great scource of info) Suvarnabhumi radar shut down and it took them 40 minutes to get it restarted. No planes could land or takeoff from either Bangkok's airports causing some planes to divert to Pattaya.

 

http://www.pattayaon...ailure-bangkok/

[Guest fountainhall]

No planes could land or takeoff from either Bangkok's airports causing some planes to divert to Pattaya.

 

This is just totally unbelievable! The situation was a lot worse than a few planes having to land at at U-Tapao. And apparently this is not the first time it has happened, but it is by far the worst.

 

The problem caused delays for 50 flights and forced 13 aircraft to land elsewhere -- six flights at U-Tapao Airport, two each to Chiang Mai International Airport, Phuket International Airport and Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur International Airport, as well as one at Cambodia’s Siem Reap International Airport . . .

 

While experiencing the radar system failure, 21 flights were waiting, queuing to depart and take off at Suvarnabhumi Airport with the longest at 105 minutes, while 15 flights were in the air, queuing to land with delays of 30 minutes on average, while the longest delay was 71 minutes.

 

In a related development, Squadron Leader Prajak Sajjasophon, president of Aeronautical Radio of Thailand (AEROTHAI), admitted that such an incident occurred in 2008 when monitors of the closed-circuit television system experienced glitches . . .

 

The AEROTHAI chief explained that the latest incident resulted from the failure of the power supply from an uninterruptible power source (UPS) which disrupted the electrical power used for the air traffic control for half an hour, causing a radar system failure for both Don Mueang and Suvarnabhumi airports.

 

As an initial solution, the officials applied the radio communication signal to manage the air traffic control in accordance with the emergency response plan.

 

The AEROTHAI president said that the life of the uninterruptible power source is seven years and that the UPS has been used for six years, admitting that some technical glitches which were beyond control might have occurred.

 

http://www.mcot.net/...age/380065.html

 

According to The Nation, it was not a 30-minute failure, but almost an hour from 6:15pm to 7:12pm. What would have happened, I wonder, if it had occurred during the peak 10:00pm to midnight period?

 

I am a frequent critic of Suvarnabhumi, but basically of its passenger services. This is borne out by other frequent travellers in the 2012 Skytrax poll which drops Suvarnabhumi from 13th to 25th - virtually the lowest of the major airports in East Asia behind Seoul Incheon, Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing Capital, KLIA, Nagoya, Tokyo Haneda, Shanghai Hongqiiao, Tokyo Narita, Osaka Kansai and Seoul Gimpo.

 

But this business of having to close entire runways to widebody jets for a total of four months suggests that something is seriously wrong. I asked on the "Suvarnabhumi New Mess" thread: can anyone imagine Heathrow, Narita, Singapore or any other major international two-runway airports closing for even a few days for resurfacing? Now the radar and its back-up system going out for an hour. It's all rather frightening.

 

And the next question is: who will be fired? Answer: almost certainly, no-one! TIT!

[Guest fountainhall]

The media today is having a field day with the utter incompetence which led to the breakdown of the radar systems at BKK for minutes short of one hour.

 

As the Post points out, this may well be the longest radar outage at any airport in the world over the last 45 years.

 

The radar breakdown may be the longest in the world for 45 years, and airline executives and pilots yesterday called the incident "inexcusable" . . .

 

(A) senior THAI pilot said he had experienced radar system breakdowns elsewhere in the world, but that the disruptions caused by those incidents only lasted a matter of minutes . . .

 

The incident further inconvenienced international carriers which have been struggling since June 11 to lessen the impacts of the 60-day maintenance shutdown of one of Suvarnabhumi's two runways

 

Inevitably, the President of the company providing radar services, Aerothai, sought to play down the scale of the disaster, saying -

 

"Things happened unexpectedly"

 

http://www.bangkokpo...of-suvarnabhumi

 

Which is surely one reason why back-up systems are in place, ready to kick in the moment the main systems fail? Not in Thailand. What follows is much worse!

 

A back-up radar system that could cover both airports together is at Thung Maha Mek and could operate effectively, but there was no staff manning the system at the time when it was needed

 

http://www.mcot.net/...age/379855.html

 

Why, the travelling public and the airlines must demand of the government, do both Bangkok airports share the same radar system? And which idiot ensured the back-up system was unmanned?

 

Meanwhile, the Minister for Transport has the gall to tell the public that the incident was "unavoidable"

 

http://www.nationmul...t-30184738.html

 

Sorry Mr. Minister, don’t you have any concerns for the airlines whose schedules were thrown into utter disarray as a result of many hours lost with aircraft having to land elsewhere in the region and the consequent on-going delays at other international airports which could have lasted well into the night? And you say this was an “unavoidable experience”? Did you really say “unavoidable”? If so, then that is an utter disgrace. Perhaps the Minister might have explained why airports around the world can operate without specific radar breakdowns of this magnitude for 45 years, yet at BKK it is unavoidable?

 

It is a vital part of the working of any airport that vital systems are continuously checked and double-checked, and drills undertaken at regular intervals to ensure all staff know how to analyse problems and solve them within moments. Vital spare parts, that have also been regularly tested, must always be easily accessible at a moment’s notice and back-up systems must be manned at all times. It seems perfectly clear that those in charge hadn’t the faintest idea what had gone wrong, nor how to put it right.

 

And we the travelling public put our lives in the hands of such incompetents!

[Guest]

This is astonishing. How can things go so badly wrong, at what should be a facility built to 21st century standards?

 

There should be enough redundancies built into the system to prevent this kind of outage.

[Guest]

Back onto the earlier topic of capacity, Heathrow (2 runway) operates at up to 87 movements an hour and Gatwick does up to 54 an hour with a single runway. That makes Gatwick the worlds busiest single runway airport.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/heathrow-set-for-big-increase-in-capacity-7876755.html?origin=internalSearch

[Guest fountainhall]

And how many times has Gatwick been closed for 8 weeks for resurfacing? Never!

 

How many times has it been closed for even a week for resurfacing! Never!

 

Here is a message from the Construction Director in charge of resurfacing Gatwick airport this year, something that is done once every 12 years and takes around 10 months.

 

There are some big numbers involved, with 400,000 sq metres of runway to resurface (using around 65,000 tonnes of asphalt) and 1,900 runway and taxiway lights to replace, fed by 530 km of new electrical cabling.

 

With only one runway, we don’t have the luxury of closing it down and working along it from start to finish. Instead, we will be working through the night when we have fewest flights. The runway will be closed from 21:30 – 05:30 every night (except Sundays), from now until December.

 

http://www.gatwickai...ction-director/

 

So what is really wrong with the runways at Suvarnabhumi?

[Bob]

So what is really wrong with the runways at Suvarnabhumi?

 

Well, other than sinking into the swamp and likely built wrong, not a thing!

[Guest fountainhall]

So now comes the much-anticipated news that all Air Asia flights will move to Don Mueang from 1st October. The AOT is also targeting another 14 smaller airlines for the move which will officially make Don Mueang the lcc hub for Bangkok.

 

I know some passengers will be pissed off. But as I and others have consistently said, it is the only logical solution to Suvarnabhumi's overcrowding, barring a massive expansion of BKK and the addition of a third runway. However, the current expansion plans only take BKK up to 60 million passengers in about 4 years time, and with 51 million or so already estimated for 2012, BKK will continue to be beyond saturation point even once the expansion is complete.

 

So endeth a long running saga with a succession of incompetent Ministers (and governments) proclaiming that Bangkok can only have one hub airport. IATA also trumpeted the same tune, no doubt beause that is what its member airlines would prefer. But in the absence of an expansion plan that would bring the airport up to 75 million passengers and more, it was all just hot air.

 

http://www.bangkokpo...-budget-air-hub

 

Now if they can only fix the radar problems and whatever the real problems are in causing the runway surfacing to close the runways for a whopping 60 days each, maybe airport issues will finally get off the front pages.

[Bob]

Do you know if there will be any remaining flights by any airlines between Suvarnabhumi and Chiangmai? Last time they moved some of the domestic flights to Don Muang, there still were plenty of flights from CNX to Suvarnabhumi and vice versa. If not.....ugh.....looks like I have to gaze at Don Muang again.

[Guest fountainhall]

I believe Orient Thai has said it will move. Obviously there will be TG flights. I have not heard anything about Bangkok Airways, and I assume there must be a good chance they will stay at Suvarnabhumi.