Thai Airways to resume Tokyo-Phuket flights

Bangkok Post: 9 Jul 2008 Tokyo-Phuket TG flights will resume

Thai Airways International is resuming non-stop flights from Tokyo to Phuket, which were suspended after the tsunami devastated the Thai coast in December 2004.

The flag carrier is set to reintroduce the twice-a-week service on Thursday and Saturday starting on July 17, using a Boeing 777-200 jetliner. The aircraft can carry 309 passengers, 30 of them in business class, president Apinan Sumanaseni confirmed yesterday.

Phuket's hospitality and tourism industry welcomed the decision, saying the cancellation of the non-stop flights had affected traffic from one of the island's most important markets.

The Tourism Authority of Thailand's Phuket office estimated the revived THAI flights should increase overall Japanese arrivals by at least 10% and stimulate traffic in the low-season between April and October.

Occupancy rates of hotels and resorts in May and June, the trough of the low season, were only 10-15% compared with 50% in the same period last year, due largely to high oil prices and the economic downturn.

The Phuket Tourist Association projected that average hotel occupancy in Phuket in the coming high season would be 70% compared with 75% in the 2006-07 high season.

The resumed THAI flights would only be inbound as there would be no non-stop flight taking off from Phuket to Tokyo's Narita airport.

After dropping passengers at Phuket, flight TG 671 continues to Bangkok.

THAI executives said Japanese tourists returning to Tokyo after visiting Phuket could use the airline's frequent domestic flights to Bangkok and connect with THAI's services from Suvarnabhumi Airport to Narita, with four flights a day.