British Airways dumps Thailand flights until 2023
British Airways dumps Thailand flights until 2023
British Airways has dropped its plan to reinstate its direct Thailand flights in October and has now ditched them all until 2023. It's a shock move considering UKers are usually in the top 5 in terms of source countries for tourists to Thailand. That means no BA winter flights to the popular destination, although the Mid-East airlines are still going to Bangkok.
This has got to indicate declining prospects for a partial tourism revival late this year. It's certainly not good news for Thailand or, by extension, Cambodia and Vietnam which partly depend on the Bangkok flight hub for some jump-off visitors and their tasty tourist dollars.
BA calls its BKK service "low yield" flights, a.k.a., a lot of cheap charlies in the seats. LOL.
Headline: British Airways flights to Thailand suspended until 2023
This has got to indicate declining prospects for a partial tourism revival late this year. It's certainly not good news for Thailand or, by extension, Cambodia and Vietnam which partly depend on the Bangkok flight hub for some jump-off visitors and their tasty tourist dollars.
BA calls its BKK service "low yield" flights, a.k.a., a lot of cheap charlies in the seats. LOL.
Headline: British Airways flights to Thailand suspended until 2023
https://thethaiger.com/hot-news/transpo ... until-2023British Airways isn’t heading back to Bangkok until at least next year. Tour operators were hoping the British flagship carrier would be adding regular flights again between Heathrow and Bangkok in time for Thailand’s high season, just when the winter kicks in in the UK.
British Airways was originally set to resume flights in November this year but has now reviewed this decision and made no commitment to restarting services between Heathrow and Suvarnabhumi.
BA says that Bangkok, and Thailand, “is not top of BA’s list for resumption, as it is predominantly low-yield tourist traffic”.
(Low-yield traffic are passengers who are predominantly chasing the lowest fares and spend the least per seat on an aircraft.)
They also cited the “stiff price competition from the Middle East carriers – Qatar, Emirates and Etihad” – who are already flying either daily or multiple fleets per week.
But BA is selling Bangkok flights with a OneWorld partner, with connections in Doha using Qatar Airways.
“We regularly keep our extensive global network under review, and we’ve taken the decision to extend the suspension of our Bangkok service.”
Meanwhile, Thailand will lose another UK connection in August. Budget airline Scoot, which began flying Gatwick-Bangkok-Singapore in March, will suspend services on August 21., But the Singapore-based budget airline says they are planning to return to regular UK – Thailand flights at the end of October. But these flights have not been confirmed at this time and are not currently available for bookings.
Only Thai Airways and Taiwan’s EVA Air offering non-stop services between Bangkok and London’s Heathrow.
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Re: British Airways dumps Thailand flights until 2023
Didn't BA have only once a day connection to Bangkok before covid anyways? So not that huge deal really.
- jaynewcastle
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Re: British Airways dumps Thailand flights until 2023
BA said 3 months ago that they wouldn't re-start flights in Oct 2022, and that it would be 2023 when they did
- Cowshed Cowboy
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Re: British Airways dumps Thailand flights until 2023
I wish they all could be Caledonian,
Wish they all could be Caledonion,
Wish they all could be Caledonian girls.
Wish they all could be Caledonion,
Wish they all could be Caledonian girls.
Yes sir, I can boogie, I can boogie, boogie, boogie all night long.
Re: British Airways dumps Thailand flights until 2023
BA has long been losing it's footholds on this route for a long time. I seem to remember they used to be in partnership with Qantas and for Brits going to Australia they could go to Bangkok for a stopover and then go onto Oz with BA or Qantas and vice versa with flight shares arrangements. They were even in talks about merging in 2008. Those grandiose plans all fell apart and now if you want to go to Australia with BA you go via Singapore (and they are up against both Qantas and Singapore airlines).
LHR to BKK is now a stand alone route and Thai and EVA are cheaper and the Arab or European airlines are way cheaper if you don't mind a stop somewhere.
BA's product is just not competitive anymore. In 1983 they described themselves as the "World's Favourite Airline" which was a stretch even by advertising slogans low truth bar. It was bases on the number of people flown. It has long since lost any claim to that. "We never forget you have a choice" was another one; a fact not lost of their former passengers.
When I return to the UK, British Airways never gets on the first page of SkyScanner and a quick look at their prices shows why.
LHR to BKK is now a stand alone route and Thai and EVA are cheaper and the Arab or European airlines are way cheaper if you don't mind a stop somewhere.
BA's product is just not competitive anymore. In 1983 they described themselves as the "World's Favourite Airline" which was a stretch even by advertising slogans low truth bar. It was bases on the number of people flown. It has long since lost any claim to that. "We never forget you have a choice" was another one; a fact not lost of their former passengers.
When I return to the UK, British Airways never gets on the first page of SkyScanner and a quick look at their prices shows why.
- armchairlawyer
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Re: British Airways dumps Thailand flights until 2023
Reminiscing here, BA used to do one flight to Oz via SIN and one via BKK, both 747s. In 2014 that changed to both via SIN. They said at the time that it was down to better ops at SIN. They ran a daily 777 to BKK until Covid.Doc67 wrote: ↑Thu Aug 11, 2022 12:23 pm BA has long been losing it's footholds on this route for a long time. I seem to remember they used to be in partnership with Qantas and for Brits going to Australia they could go to Bangkok for a stopover and then go onto Oz with BA or Qantas and vice versa with flight shares arrangements. They were even in talks about merging in 2008. Those grandiose plans all fell apart and now if you want to go to Australia with BA you go via Singapore (and they are up against both Qantas and Singapore airlines).
LHR to BKK is now a stand alone route and Thai and EVA are cheaper and the Arab or European airlines are way cheaper if you don't mind a stop somewhere.
BA's product is just not competitive anymore. In 1983 they described themselves as the "World's Favourite Airline" which was a stretch even by advertising slogans low truth bar. It was bases on the number of people flown. It has long since lost any claim to that. "We never forget you have a choice" was another one; a fact not lost of their former passengers.
When I return to the UK, British Airways never gets on the first page of SkyScanner and a quick look at their prices shows why.
When I used to do that route non-stop I always compared prices and EVA generally had the best deal (in Premium Econ) but quite often BA did. Never once THAI or Qantas. EVA cabin crew were good. BA could be be a bit sniffy. But BA's PE seating was excellent. Around 2014, the Thais suddenly cottoned onto EVA and started switching fromTHAI to EVA but they didn't use BA much.
THAI pre-Covid preferred to sell through high street agents and this kept their prices up. They didn't compete on the OTAs as this would have undermined their main sales outlet. But now they seem to have bitten the bullet and gone fully competitive on the OTAs. This means they will lose most of their (more profitable) high street agent sales as only the most harcore anti-tech customers will keep using that.
Having moved to non-direct flights, I actually prefer them as the non-stop is a long slog. The best ones are those that are inline, so you don't fly extra hours, have good connection times (90 mins is nice) and are within 3 hours of either end. Finnair used to be the best but not now with Russian air space closed.
Re: British Airways dumps Thailand flights until 2023
Wait until Little Miss Dense becomes Prime Minister and ruins what's left of the economy. Most people won't need to be concerning themselves with potential overseas travel destinations such as Bangkok anymore.
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