PeterRS

Thank you. I might check it out.

Where is this? Bangkok? Pattaya?

Guys, with the greatest respect, I think this tragedy is above petty nit-picking and word meanings. We all know what happened to those poor Vietnamese (and perhaps some Chinese) and how they found themselves in that situation. Lets have some respect for those who must have died in horrible circumstances. There is also a thread on this on Gay Asia. Maybe best to stick with that one. Just a thought.

This is a ghastly event, yet it is not the first time that people have died in the back of airless containers as they desperately tried to get into the UK. Its appalling to think that some families and loved ones coughed up around $40,000 to make the trip from Vietnam and are now may be in debt for years. There are reports that some of the traffickers are repaying families those costs. Fat lot of use that will be to families of have lost their young sons and daughters, and to the young wives and children left behind. We can only hope that a tragedy such as this will prevent others from trying to do the same. Unlikely, I fear.

Do Chinese women still account for much of the customer base?

One of the prime reasons THAI is failing is precisely because the government interferes far too often with the running of the airline. It replaces the Board Chairmen regularly, seemingly at whim, and makes often inexplicable decisions. As with many things in Thailand, part of the reason for the airline's decline is inevitably corruption. It used to have far too many different types of aircraft, no doubt because someone massively benefited from purchasing a batch of a certain aircraft even though not ideal for the route structure. Now it is down to about six different models and should be in a better position to become competitive. Yet its failure to sell its remaining 8 long-range A340s as soon as it ceased flying the transPacific routes was a massive mistake. Years after axing the routes, these aircraft sit idly by at two of the country's airports. Some group of people in THAI should have been fired years ago for allowing this to happen. Now the value of these planes has plummeted and they will soon be worth almost nothing. THAI desperately needs a makeover of all its front end cabins. Some aircraft have been refitted and its first and business class services can be excellent. The problem is that too many have not been retrofitted. Those who can afford the front end want the same competitive hard product but on THAI it is a lottery. Little wonder these passengers are deciding with their feet. Concentrating on some form of competition with low cost carriers is surely madness. THAI already has Thai Smile. Not sure if it still has its stake in Not Air which has also been hemorrhaging cash in recent years. With Hong Kong undergoing long-running protests, its tourism is collapsing. Equally it has one airline teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, Hong Kong Airlines, Cathay Pacific struggling with half full aircraft and Cathay Dragon, its subsidiary which serves many Chinese cities, probably in a worse state. Future transit passengers must surely be wary of booking on these airlines for who knows how many flights will be cancelled if the protests continue. If I found myself with what was scheduled as a 90 minute layover suddenly facing one of 5 hours or even overnight, I would be mightily pissed off. For those who would normally transit in Hong Kong, THAI and BKK should be aggressively marketing themselves as the sensible alternative. If they are, I am not aware of it.

The Bangkok route was announced as a possibility in the Bangkok Post a couple of days ago. But that price is not London/Bangkok or vice versa - it is Kuwait (the airline's 'home base) to London. It adds Jazeera has no A321's in its fleet at present and none yet on order. Jazeera's route map has no destinations east of India. https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/1755754/kuwait-budget-airline-to-use-short-haul-jets-on-london-bangkok-route

Every month they have delayed selling them, the value of their fleet has dropped quite dramatically. This information is dated August 2018 http://www.aircraftvaluenews.com/aircraft-market-assessment-13/ The list price of a new A340-500 was $261 million. The present resale value of a 1997 long-range A340 is estimated at US$9 million. Go figure! Another THAI disaster.

Apologies - in my previous post when referring to ETOPS I stated specific numbers of hours. It should have been minutes!

The reason for the suspension was more simple. Like Singapore Airlines, THAI took a bet that the four engine Airbus A340 designed in the mid-1990s was the right plane for both their Los Angeles and New York routes. Under the old ETOPS rules (Extended Operations - usually over water). airline routes were required to have alternate airports not more than 120 hours and some years later 180 hours flying time away in the event that one engine became inoperable. So twin engine aircraft were not possible over the Pacific. When SIA, THAI and others planned their transPacific non-stops and did not believe the market warranted the larger 744s, four engines were still essential for trans-Pacific routes. Thanks in large part to the success of the Boeing 777, the ETOPS range was extended first to 180 hours and then to 240 hours and more. This directive only came into operation in 2007. By that time SIA and THAI were flying their less efficient more gas guzzling A340s and having trouble making them profitable. Besides, oil prices were starting to rise substantially. THAI consistently sold 80% of its seats on the New York route, but to be profitable would have had to sell 120%!! So both airlines quit the routes. Airbus then stopped making the plane in 2011. SIA has now restarted Singapore to Newark with the new ultra long range A350s but only with business and premium economy cabins. At least SIA was able to get Airbus to take back its A340s. Someone screwed up at THAI and the airline still has 9 of the 10 it purchased but never uses them. It tried for years to sell them but no operator wanted them! I believe they are all grounded at Don Mueang and U-tapao. If thats true, I reckon the airline would be better off selling them for scrap.

What I dont understand is why BA ditched the continuation of its BKK flight on to Sydney. Flights were always packed in all sectors. Even if you tried to get a business class miles ticket more than 6 months ahead it was almost always impossible.

Having taken BA from LHR to BKK and back, I will never fly them again. The ageing 777s they use on this route should soon be due for the scrapyard. The cabin was dirty, the seats very uncomfortable, food mediocre and service - well, nowhere else would it be called service! Once one of the best in the world, BA is now worse than most low cost carriers.

I once used the BBC Weather site. On a visit to Taipei, the forecast was for bright sunshine and little cloud. Looking out of my hotel room window, I was watching lashing rain, howling winds and broken branches flying through the air as a typhoon zipped through! I then switched to the Weather Channel. Not as bad, but also virtually useless for forecasts longer than one day ahead. When I travel I usually check the 10 day forecast at least to give me an idea of what the weather may be like. Most times it has not been anything close to accurate. If I want to check what might happen in the next two hours, I just look at the sky. That's usually pretty accurate.

As far as I recall Akha Ama Coffee is only sold in their own two coffee shops, ini in the old city. The founder of the coffee company appeared in a TED video a few years ago. He is truly inspirational.

Not at all! I turned up at BKK a year or so ago and realised I had lost the outbound part of the TM form. I spoke to an Immigration officer who said it was no problem. He then just handed me another form to fill out. No fuss. No fine.

I will go if only to experience the Doi Tung Coffee. This is from the Coffee sites main page - I have tasted another hill tribe coffee, Akha Ama Coffee, in Chiang Mai and loved it.

Not sure how it is done in Germany but in Bangkok the basic equipment looks pretty complicated and expensive. But spread over several procedures per day, that cost will be amortised in less than a year I reckon. Part of the cost in Bangkok is for the anaesthetist . He/she not only administers the sedative but has to be on hand in the remote case of something going seriously wrong. I suspect the doctor and anaesthetist fees cover about half the cost. Plus Bumrungrad now pads bills quite heavily, no doubt to help finance its expension into other countries.

There is a ,lengthy topic over on gaybuttonthai about Hong Kong Airlines being in a precarious financial position and how it is cutting back its trans Pacific routes. It had planned to compete with Cathay Pacific over the Pacific but with tourism in Hong Kong down around 40% Cathay has now axed some flights and will no doubt be slashing fares on some others. It seems clear that Hong Kong Airlines will have a mighty job on its hands keeping its trans Pacific flights afloat at those fares. With a mountain of debt and large reduction in passengers, the chances must surely be that all their trans Pacific routes will be axed sooner rather than later.. https://gaybuttonthai.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10005

If I may be permitted to go off on a slight tangent, how you fill in the time between checking out and getting to the airport can throw up odd experiences. Checking out of a New York hotel about 15 years ago with 4 hours before I had to leave for the airport. I decided to get the subway down to the Village and buy a few gay DVDs. Purchase made followed by a nice coffee and cake, I returned to the hotel, got my bags and popped the DVDs into a back pocket in my carry on. I then locked that part. Checking in for my flight to Los Angeles, I was surprised to see SSS in rather large letters on my boarding pass. I asked what they meant. Confidential, I was told. So I slowly ambled up to the security check, took off my shoes, took my lap top and my small bag of liquids out and walked through. No problem. No alarm or anything. But a very large lady waddled over to me and asked me to move to the side. She then proceeded to all but strip search me. Satisfied, she then turned to my carry-on and I realised too late that the porn DVDs were inside. Naturally I had to unlock everything and let her go through the lot. She found the DVDs whereupon she laid them individually on the table for all other passengers to see. I was more than slightly embarrassed. When she found nothing, she asked me to pack it all, get properly dressed and proceed to my gate. Once in my seat, I heard my name mentioned. I was being asked to go to the first class cabin with my luggage. Great, I thought. An upgrade. Unfortunately no. There were two airport cops waiting to escort me out to the boarding area. They were extremely polite but would not tell me what was happening. Once outside, nothing happened. Then one shouted at the top of his voice, "Get over here fast. Were holding up the aircraft." Soon I saw the overweight security lady waddling as fast as she could. When she arrived, one cop asked her, "Where?" She pointed to the back pocket of my carry-on. As requested I opened it and they found the DVDs. They then became extremely angry - but not at me. "You held up this flight just for this?" "Yes, these should not be allowed!" The cop angrily shouted at her to go back to he post, repacked my bag and then apologised very profusely. They then asked me to fill up a form which I understood would enable me to claim some form of compensation for harassment. I waived that right and said I just wanted the plane to get on my way to LAX. On board, the purser came up to me and offered me a bottle of wine as compensation - but sadly no upgrade! It was only weeks later that I discovered what SSS meant. Airlines have access to the full details of a ticket. Since mine had originated in Bangkok and Thailand was still regarded as a 'sensitive' country, the SSS stood for "Special Security Screening". You live and learn!

I would not bank on it. Tourism is down by huge numbers. Hotel prices have dropped quite dramatically and shops have enticing sales. But the protests show no sign of stopping because the idiot Chief Executive has been totally reactive and put offers on the table that are weeks and months too late. My guess is that CX is preparing for another round of cuts if the protests do not stop in the next week or so. The airline's balance sheet will already make for depressing reading. Future traffic projections even more so. Unless tourism figures start to increase - and we are already in the peak tourism season - my gut feel is more flights will get the chop. Sorry!

Meanwhile Bangkok has enjoyed the longest monsoon rain free months I can ever recall. There have been a few storms but far fewer than over the last 15 years and each has lasted only 15 minutes or so instead of often one hour.

There is a small number of hotels that have started to introduce 24 hour bookings. So if you arrive at 7.00 pm you are entitled to a 7.00 pm check out. The U Hotel Sukhumvit and the U hotel Sathorn (off Ngamduplee not far from Babylon). But their cheapest rates will be a lot more than the other hotels discussed here, even on agoda.

I think there is a degree of selfishness when we travel. We know hotels have check-in and check-out rules but we sometimes expect them to fit in with our own different arrival and departure times especially if we inform them in advance. But the fact is that the staff in hotels have a lot of work to do between check out and check in. Although we may arrive at 7 in the morning we get pissed off that there is no room for an early arrival. And if we have a late night flight we again get pissed off when we cannot stay beyond the official check out time. As others have stated, you are much more likely to find fewer problems if you keep the hotel informed. And if you have paid for a room, the hotel is obliged to provide you with a room even though you may have suffered a delay, But many people do not prepay their rooms. That becomes a gray area. If you are delayed and have not got message to the hotel, then you could well find tour room is given away if the hotel is full. I once had an extremely long delay arriving at a New York hotel and no way of reaching reception to inform them. So instead of arriving at 5.00 pm as earlier advised I did not get there till 1.00 am. The receptionist looked at my reservation form, checked hi computer and then told me he was sorry the hotel was full and they had given my room away a couple of hours earlier. But i had prepaid. As I was about to explode, he informed me that he would upgrade me to a top floor suite for my three nights! It happened to be a 4 star hotel but not a chain hotel and I had stayed there only once a few years before. What would have happened in a one or two star hotel I just do not know. But having paid in advance, there must be some obligation on the hotel to provide accommodation whenever you happen to arrive in that 24 hour period My rule is therefore clear. I prepay much more often than not. I keep hotels informed of my expected arrival time and any change. If arriving early or departing late, I request in advance access to the room early or late. But I accept it is up to the hotel. Sometimes it works, most times not. But if I am arriving on an early flight at around 7.00 am, I will usually prepay that one night just to make sure!

Not sure how old the Tarntawan is but hotels and apartments built before around 1995 are likely to have metal pipes throughout the building. A new water tank seems likely the cause on this occasion. But in the heat and humidity of Thailand if the general piping has not been changed to the heavy duty plastic variety increasingly water will have a slightly brownish tinge.

Seems clear the writer has no clue that The Birth of Venus is one of the great Renaissance paintings by Botticelli!