Icao Rejects Thai Ideas To Remedy Airline Safety

[Coss]

Arrivals may not meet forecast

 

 

SUCHAT SRITAMA

THE NATION April 16, 2015 1:00 am

 

TOURISM MAY not meet its arrivals forecast if aviation safety concerns are not cleared up, key tourism bodies warned this week.

 

"The private sector initially believed that the lifting of martial law would win a lot of tourists |back to the country. But the situation has now again returned to difficulty. If the air safety problem remains unsolved, the tourism target will need to be revised down," said Ittirit Kinglake, president of the Tourism Council of Thailand.

 

Thailand might not achieve this year's projection of 29 million arrivals and inbound revenue of Bt140 billion, due to the current air travel safety issues raised by the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

 

Thai tourism has been tested by many trials through the years such as the Sumatra tsunami, airport closures, the flood of a few years ago and the political crisis last year.

 

During the first quarter of this year, international tourists |filed back to the country, with |7.8 million visitors welcomed, up |23 per cent year on year.

 

Ittirit said the Russian market would continue to slow until next year as the economy there had failed to improve.

 

Vacationers from other key markets such as Japan, South Korea and China may suspend their plans to travel to Thailand for fear of flying.

 

However, the council is confident that domestic tourism will hit the target of 150 million trips.

 

Chanin Donavanik, chief executive officer of Dusit International, said many hotels cannot raise their room rates for the high season in the last quarter of this year due to the global economic instability.

 

"Thailand should perform better than this. It's because of many problems from the economic situation outside to internal problems," he added.

 

Charamporn Jotikasthira, president of Thai Airways International Plc, said that last quarter, THAI began to drop some loss-making routes, such as Johannesburg in January, while more routes in Europe and Asia will be cut this year.

 

In February, the carrier revised its summer schedule and announced cost-cutting measures, followed in April by revising its route expansion plan especially for China and South Korea, due to the safety issue.

 

Its average passenger-load factor in the first quarter was 76 per cent, up from 68.9 per cent in the same quarter last year.

 

The improvement is expected to continue throughout this year and next, which should help the company return to profit in early 2017.

 

One of the major factors helping to increase revenue is the price of jet fuel, which on average has been 20 per cent lower than last year's level, enabling the airline to save about Bt10 billion to date.

 

THAI expects its average load factor to exceed 76 per cent in the current quarter, thanks largely to flights added during the Songkran Festival.

[Coss]

More Amusement...

 

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Thai Airways International: Old habits die hard

 

BY JAMES LEE, ETN THAILAND CORRESPONDENT | APR 26, 2015

According to local media, some execs at Thai Airways are fearing to see foreign consultants come to help Thai Airways… as they might leak information to the competition.

 

This story could generate a smile if Thai Airways International was not in such a dire financial situation. Looking at recent data about the financial positions of Southeast Asian major carriers by CAPA (Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation), Thai Airways International had the worst financial performance of any ASEAN state carrier, losing US$523 million last year. This represented 57% of the total of accumulated losses for 17 carriers in Southeast Asia.

 

While Thai Airways’ President Charamporn Jotikasthira is trying to fix the multiple problems that the carrier faces – from ageing aircraft to an overstaffed administration, as well as the absence of a sales strategy - the President is now under fire by former Thai airline executives who explain about the sticky situation in the President’s hiring of the foreign consultant firm, Bain & Company, to fix the airline’s woes.

 

According to the Bangkok Post, some former executives expressed their worries about the cancellation of some routes. But above that, they expressed their high concern about the fact that a Bain & Company executive worked before for Temasek Holdings in Singapore, which owns Singapore Airlines. They expressed concerns about possible leaks to due to the affiliation. Looking at Singapore Airlines, which last year managed to write off a profit of US$166 million, it is true that the half billion dollars of losses at Thai Airways International is a model to follow. The collusion between the political world and Thai Airways is also certainly a model that Singapore Airlines would love to know the secret of.

 

The Temasek argument has been used in the past to let a project go down the drain. When Thai Airways associated with Tiger Air from Singapore to create a new low-cost carrier Tiger Air Thailand, some government officials and members of the Board of Directors denounced “the selling of the airline†to competitor Temasek.

 

The next complaint may be about the fact that Thai Airways will have some experts from its Star Alliance partners coming in to help reassess safety procedures at the airline. They, too, might also leak some secrets to their own carrier.

 

Beyond the short-sighted vision of some former Thai Airways executives, according to a Bangkok Post report, the story tells a lot about the mentality of the airline. Many within the carrier are always keen to blame others over their own decade-long incapacity to solve self-inflicted problems. There is an urgent need to let Thai Airways International finally enter into the 21st century.

 

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