Bangkok’s new airport opens

Bangkok’s new Suvarnabhumi airport opened officially last week with the touchdown of a Lufthansa cargo plane. 

Massive convoys of nearly 3,000 trucks crossed Bangkok’s sprawling city centre carrying equipment from the old and very tired airport, Don Muang to the new airport. Don Muang airport has been shut down.

The new airport was Thailand’s recently ousted prime minister and billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra’s pet project. The new aeronautical edifice is likely to give Singapore’s airport a run for its money, competing for the hub business to Europe, Middle East and Australia.

With 40 million passengers using Suvarnabhumi in the next 12 months, it will be Southeast Asia’s busiest airport and help Thailand’s projected US$13 billion tourism industry this year.  Thaksin made completion of the new airport a national priority.

Keeping Thaksin’s deadline may reassure investors that the country’s new military government won’t hurt the economy. Carriers including Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific worked for months to be ready to move operations to the new airport.

Suvarnabhumi airport will be expanded to handle 45-50 million passengers a year based on two parallel runways with a total capacity of 76 flights per hour.  While the old Don Muang airport was designed to handle 30 passengers a year, it was taking on 40 million. 

And, with the upcoming launch of new and expansion of existing low cost airlines, the second phase expansion can’t come soon enough. Upon full completion, Suvarnabhumi will have four runways and passenger terminals capable of handling 100 million movements a year.
 
Two congested highways link Suvarnabhumi to downtown Bangkok about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) away, with a rail connection scheduled to be completed in two years. The rail link will shuttle passengers to the city within 15 minutes, compared with more than 40 minutes via road, the tourism authority says.

Authorities have registered 2,500 trained taxi drivers to collect arrivals at the airport, said Chotisak Asapaviriya, president of Airports of Thailand, which operates Suvarnabhumi. The transport ministry said September 15 it may increase the number to 10,000 to ease shortages.

The first major airport hotel – the Novotel Suvarnabhumi Airport Hotel – opened earlier this month and experienced its first 100% occupancy last night, with the 612-room property forced to turn away many extra requests.
 
The ultra-modern 500 room hotel is located just a three-minute walk from the airport’s main terminal connected by a 200-metre, air conditioned underground walkway.

The Novotel complex is made up of two square-shaped five-storey buildings, covering 10.5 hectares, with large open atrium areas in the centre of each structure. The two buildings are also joined by another massive glass atrium designed as the hotel lobby. With a lobby covering 2,800sqm five-stories in height, the Novotel Suvarnabhumi Airport Hotel boasts one of the largest hotel lobbies in the world.

The official inauguration of Suvarnabhumi, which is pronounced Sawana-poom,  is the latest in what appears to have become an Asian ritual in recent years, with as national economies rise, governments discard the crowded, often improvised old airports and opening giant, gleaming replacements.

This has taken place in Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and now in Bangkok with the new airports offering cathedrals of international air travel, with soaring glass facades and cavernous departure halls.

A limited number of flights have been operating from Suvarnabhumi over recent weeks to test the airport’s systems and when the first flight touched down Thursday at 05:05, a Thai Airways flight from Delhi, jetlagged passengers were  greeted with a brief and modest welcoming ceremony.

This modest inauguration was a result of the current governmental situation, but should not detract from the grandeur of the airport. Like most mega projects in Asia, Suvarnabhumi comes with its superlatives – the control tower – at 132.2m, or 434ft, it is said to be the world’s highest, taller than Kuala Lumpur’s control tower by about 10m, according to the Thai airport authorities. The airport’s main hangar can accommodate three Airbus 380s and is the largest in the region.

Tourism in Thailand accounts for a large share of passengers using Bangkok’s airport, with more than 11 million tourists visiting the country last year and Tourism Thailand projecting tourist arrivals at 13.8 million for 2006. But that forecast may be optimistic as the coup may still scare some visitors away as hotels and resorts are beginning to reporting some dips in occupancy.

The timing of the opening of the new airport coincided with Thailand Tourism Mart 2006 (TTM) taking place in Bangkok this week. Delegates from all over the world arrived at the old airport and then departed from the new one.

If that is not good marketing, showing out with the old and in with the new, then I don’t know what is!

A Thailand Special Report by TravelMole