BANGKOK, 12 August 2021: Thai Airways International will continue to serve the Phuket Sandbox project with flights from four cities in Europe according to its latest timetable covering August to October.
The airline offers weekly services to Phuket from Frankfurt (TG923 – Friday), London (TG917 – Saturday), Paris (TG933 – Friday) and Zurich (TG973 – Saturday). All four flights continue to Bangkok Suvarnabhumi. On the return leg, TG schedules direct flights to Paris (TG932 – Thursday) and Zurich (TG972 – Friday).
However, the flights to Phuket from Frankfurt (TG923) and London (TG917) follow the same route on the return leg, making a transit stop in Phuket to pick up passengers.
In addition to the Phuket Sandbox flights, THAI offers direct flights from Bangkok to London (TG910) twice weekly on Wednesdays and Sundays. The direct flight from Bangkok to Frankfurt (TG920) operates on Saturdays and Sundays. It also flies direct to Copenhagen twice a week on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
THAI’s network and frequencies serving European destinations until October remain just a fraction of what it offered pre-Covid-19 era and before it entered rehabilitation under Thailand’s bankruptcy court.
The airline’s Australian services that once included Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth are now limited to a twice-weekly flight (TG475) on Wednesday and Sunday.
It presents a more robust network in Asia serving three cities in Japan; twice weekly to Osaka, three weekly to Tokyo Narita, twice weekly to Tokyo Haneda, and twice weekly to Nagoya. But there is not a single flight planned for mainland China once a significant revenue earning for the airline. The closest to China is the twice-weekly flight to Hong Kong, a far cry from the four to six daily flights it mustered in the pre-Covid-19 days. It serves Taipei in Taiwan with a twice-weekly service.
In Southeast Asia, scheduled commercial services to Singapore remain grounded until September, when a single Wednesday flight will operate through to the end of October, based on the airline’s recent announcement. The airline is flying once weekly to Jakarta in Indonesia and three times weekly to Manila. However, there are no flights to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.
