Airports of Thailand vows to fix overcrowding problems

Airports of Thailand (AoT) has vowed to speed up efforts to solve overcrowding at Don Mueang airport after it received a torrent of abuse from angry netizens over the weekend

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AoT caves to furious travellers

Thodsapol Hongtong & Suchat Sritama

Airports of Thailand (AoT) has vowed to expedite efforts to solve overcrowding at Don Mueang airport after it received a torrent of abuse from irate netizens over the weekend, and said it would add eight additional immigration counters by next month.

"The number of immigration counters at the departure zone will be increased to 11 to accommodate passengers in line with the airport's third-phase development plan," said Wg Cdr Suthirawat Suwanawat, general manager of the airport.

The pledge was given after passengers took to social media to vent their anger and frustration over the long queues that occurred from late Friday night until early Saturday morning. Many claimed they had to endure waits of nearly five hours to have their passports stamped.

AoT president Nitinai Sirisamatthakarn said Monday the company is waiting for the Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand (CAAT) to approve its design plan to accommodate the extra arrival counters. The plan is likely to be approved late this month, he said.

Work will be carried out next month to add the eight counters, which will almost double the passenger-handling capacity from 1,000 people per hour to 1,800 people, he said.

Referring to the chaos that erupted on Friday night, Wg Cdr Suthirawat blamed an unusually large number of delayed flights.

He said the facility was scheduled to deal with 21 scheduled flights from 11pm to 3am but that an additional nine flights – which had been delayed – landed just before 11pm.

On top of this, another three delayed flights -- two from Singapore and one from Hong Kong – landed shortly after 11pm, along with a charter flight from China, taking the total number of flights during the four-hour window to 34, he said.

Wg Cdr Suthirawat said the immigration bureau plans to recruit 48 more officers to work at the counters.

Meanwhile, five more luggage-scanning machines will be installed next month. Ten were installed last month taking the current total to 14, he said.

Checking-in at the airport currently takes 45-60 minutes but this will hopefully improve, he added.

But even with all the planned changes, the airport would not be able to handle the number of passengers it saw on Friday night, the general manager said.

You can see our previous coverage of this story here:http://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/easy/1301038/the-great-don-mueang-wait

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