Bangkok Airways could delay the delivery of an Airbus A319 that it is scheduled to receive in February 2011.
The privately owned Thai carrier will decide whether to take delivery on time, delay, bring forward or cancel the order in the coming months, says senior vice-president of marketing Peter Wiesner. This depends on the recovery in passenger traffic, he adds.
The airline's fleet consists of three Airbus A320s, six A319s and eight ATR 72s, he says.
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The carrier is also increasing services on the Bangkok-Yangon route to 11 flights per week from seven starting 22 January.
On 1 February, it will begin a daily domestic service from Bangkok to Lampang. Thailand's PB Air used to operate on that route but it stopped operations late last year. Bangkok Airways is taking over the route by making it an extension of its ATR service from Bangkok to Sukhothai, he adds.
Over the last two years, Bangkok Airways has cut many international routes to destinations such as Fukuoka, Guilin, Hiroshima, Ho Chi Ming City, Macau, Shenzhen and Xian.
The airline hopes to resume some of these, but there is no time-frame and it depends on the return of passenger traffic, says Wiesner.
He says that last year, Bangkok Airways focused it efforts on its core routes such as those to Koh Samui, Phuket and Phnom Penh. This led to a 5.5% year-on-year increase in passenger numbers to 2.5 million, he adds.
However yields were low, and that led to an end to the airline's lowest-priced discount fares in December, says Wiesner.
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
