Thailand’s beleagured national airline, Thai Airways, and the country’s tourist industry continues to get hit financially due to flooding in Bangkok.
Thai Airways have just announced they have cancelled more than 500 flights into, out of and around Thailand in the last few weeks due to cancellations from passengers worried about the floods.
The ever-falling tourist numbers are also affecting Thailand’s tourist industry as tourist cancel planned holidays and go to other countries instead.
Thai Airways had already lost 4.8 billion baht in the first nine months of 2011, but the loses they have sustained during the final quarter of the year could dwarf even that.
That is becauseThai Airways flights into Suvarnabhumi Airport during October and midway through Bangkok’s floods saw passenger numbers fall from an average of 130,000 people per month to around 100,000 – a fall of almost 25%.
Oddly, up until recently, the Thailand Tourism Authority (TAT) had kept insisting tourism numbers were not falling during flooding.
As many Thais who were seeing a different reality pointed out, however, that could not possibly be true.
