Thailand's Nok Air firms Suvarnabhumi base for 2H24

Nok Air is concretising plans to open a base at the country's main international gateway, Bangkok Suvarnabhumi, as it seeks to pivot away from its sole reliance on domestic passenger flows, CE Wutthiphum Jurangkool told the Bangkok Post. The new base is tentatively planned to launch in the second half of 2024 and will initially be limited to one or two aircraft only. Nok Air plans to capitalise on the cooperation with minority shareholder Thai Airways International to carry the flag carrier's passengers on domestic routes out of Suvarnabhumi. Wutthiphum said their current interline partnership could be upgraded to a codeshare in the future. Wutthiphum believes that even with the integration of its domestic and short-haul subsidiary Thai Smile, the flag carrier does not have enough aircraft to serve the Thai domestic market. Its narrowbody fleet currently comprises twenty A320-200s, but the aircraft serve also regional international markets - currently, only 57.9% of Thai's A320s scheduled capacity is deployed on domestic routes, according to the ch-aviation capacities module. Thai Airways used to deploy its mainline widebodies on trunk domestic routes, mainly to Chiang Mai and Phuket, before the pandemic, but has not resumed them since.<br/>