Thai airport crisis deepens; 240,000 tourists stranded

The crisis that has shut down Bangkok, Thailand’s two main airports entered its seventh day today (Dec. 1), with no end in sight. The best advice: If you planned to fly to Bangkok in the next week or so, forget it. You should be able to reschedule without paying change fees. (Check with your airline for details.)
The latest, as of this afternoon:

What’s happening: Anti-government protesters continue to occupy Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi (BKK) and Don Muang (DMK) airports. Late today, an explosion at Muang killed a protester and wounded 22 others, Reuters news service reported. The number of stranded foreign tourists, now at 240,000, is growing. Even if demonstrators left Suvarnabhumi today, it would take a week or more to reopen the giant facility, its general manager told Reuters.

Fliers’ options: Airlines are diverting dozens of planes from Suvarnabhumi to smaller airports that are free of protests and busing customers to Utapao (UTP) airport, abut 100 miles south of Bangkok, and Phuket (HKT), among other sites, to catch flights. They are also adding service daily. Among the changes:

Air France is moving its Bangkok operations to Phuket and adding flights to and from Europe. Customers with tickets for flights to Bangkok through Dec. 7 can rebook for travel up to Feb. 28. For details, visit the airline’s updates page.

Singapore Airlines is running twice-daily service between Utapao and Singapore, and its SilkAir affiliate is adding flights from Phuket and Chiang Mai, Thailand. Customers holding tickets for travel to Bangkok through Dec. 31 can cancel or rebook without penalty for flights through Feb. 28. For details, visit the airline’s updates page.

Thai Airways has added 34 flights today from and to Utapao and Phuket, including one leaving Utapao for LAX at 7:30 p.m. tonight and another leaving LAX for Utapao at 9:30 p.m. tonight. For details, visit the airline’s updates page.

Help from hotels: The Tourism Authority of Thailand has worked with dozens of hotels to house stranded passengers. For a list and other information, visit the updates page.

— Jane Engle, assistant Los Angeles Times Travel editor

Photo: Stranded passengers wait to check in at a makeshift terminal. Credit: Paula Bronstein /  Getty Images

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 1, 2008 at 5:59 pm by Jane Engle and is filed under Airline travel, Asia, Business Travel, Frequent Flier, Global, Luxury Travel, News, Tips & Advice, Tours & Cruises. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.