BANGKOK, 12 June 2020: Asiana Airlines has pencilled in flights to most major cities in Southeast Asia for relaunch in July while reintroducing flights to Europe and the US.
Technically, the four-weekly service to Bangkok from its home base in Seoul South Korea could fly in July, but there remain uncertainties on whether Thailand will lift the ban on commercial international flights when the ruling expires 30 June.
The Civil Aviation of Authority of Thailand currently prohibits all international flights other than for repatriation or medical reasons. Speculation is rife that it might extend the ban for another month until the end of July as Thailand hopes to eradicate Covid-19 local infections.
The outlook for Asiana flying to other cities in Southeast Asia is more positive as countries prepare to relax rules for international flights and allow essential and business travel possibly under bilateral air corridor agreements.
Asiana is planning to resume flights to Hanoi, Vietnam with five weekly services and to Ho Chi Minh City with four weekly flights.
The airline plans three weekly flights to Hong Kong. Jakarta in Indonesia will be served with three weekly flights and Manila in the Philippines with four weekly flights. Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh gets three weekly flights and Singapore two flights weekly.
South Korea has been identified as one of the countries that could ink bilateral corridor agreements with ASEAN’s 10 member nations over the next few months in order to kick-start tourism while reducing the quarantine rules. Travellers would still be required to undergo PCR swab testing at airports on arrival and use a tracking app.
South Korea has recorded 11,902 Covid-19 cases and 276 deaths. It successfully flattened the infection curve, which makes it likely that it will now enter talks with those Southeast Asian nations that have also flattened the curve. The list would include Cambodia Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia, the latter having almost flattened the curve on confirmed cases (John Hopkins University). Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore are still fighting a rising curve of infections, although Singapore has flattened the curve for local community infections.
Asiana also plans to reintroduce flights to London, Paris and Frankfurt in Europe and New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle in the US during July according to Airlineroute’s advance timetable information.
There hasn’t been any community infections in Thailand for close to 3 weeks now. Extending the flight ban thus can’t be justified on that basis, unless they mean imported infections, which are the only ones still occurring.