Australians and New Zealanders may soon be able to use Automatic Gates at Suvarnabhumi

[Coss]

 

The director of Suvarnabhumi airport in Bangkok has said that Australians, New Zealanders and Japanese are being considered as the next nationalities to be allowed to use the automatic passport gates.    

Singaporeans and people from Hong Kong can already use them.    

The comment came from Wing Commander Sutheerawat Suwannawat as he announced that the airport were applying to the Airports Authority of Thailand for a 200 million baht budget to install eight more "Auto Gates" inbound next year.    

Pressure is mounting on the airport to speed things up.    At present there are 16 - eight inbound and eight outbound. People from Singapore and Hong Kong can use two of them.    

INN News quoted the Wing Commander as saying that the airport was waiting to see if the new nationalities were "appropriate" for using the gates.  

The new gates are needed to ease pressure at the airport.

Another senior official said that there are 93 counters in and 62 counters out at the moment.    

The official claimed that mostly people pass in 15 minutes but at busy times it can take 45 minutes per person.    Source: INN - via Thai Visa

Coss comments -

a. 16 but only use 2, can't afford the electricity for the other 14? or do you have to set a 'language' button on the back, Thai, English, Klingon....

b/. and how does a Nationality become appropriate to use the machine? presumably by not spitting or defecating on it?

[radioman]

Interesting, 200 million baht for 8 more machines? That's about US$6.6 million, or around $822,000 per machine. Appreciated there must be install and support costs but I'm guessing these things are seriously gold plated.

 

[Flashermac]

This goverment is spending money as if it grew on trees. For their purposes, it might as well. It's the tax payers money, and how many rich folks pay taxes here?

[cavanami]

On 8/24/2019 at 7:06 AM, radioman said:

Interesting, 200 million baht for 8 more machines? That's about US$6.6 million, or around $822,000 per machine. Appreciated there must be install and support costs but I'm guessing these things are seriously gold plated.

 

Usually a 30% "tax" when a company gets the project...