The budget airline Thai AirAsia has announced all domestic flights in Thailand have been cancelled effective immediately, due to the latest government restrictions against Covid-19.
All Thai AirAsia flights in Thailand will be canceled until at least July 31st, with an announcement expected later as to when the airline’s normal flight schedule will restart.
The airline says they have done so in order to comply with government lockdown restrictions that will be in place as of tomorrow.
The Thai AirAsia announcement was made yesterday without any warning for passengers that are already at their destination and planning on returning via the budget airline.
This has left many people stranded, with comments all over social media attesting to this fact.
Whether passengers who are stranded or who have already booked AirAsia flights between now and July 31st will get their money back is still up for debate.
Particularly as Thai AirAsia had an abysmal record when it came to returning money to passengers after last year’s government lockdowns.
The budget airline currently says they will be contacting all customers with information about their “flight recovery options”. They did not comment on what those options were, if they included refunds or if they would be in the form of vouchers or new flight bookings.
Other Thailand domestic airlines still flying
At the moment, airlines like Nok Air, Bangkok Airways, Thai Smile and Vietjet seem to be handling the current restrictions much better than has Thai AirAsia.
Not only are they still flying their usual routes, but they have already published information about passengers’ options and what they need to do to exercise them should their flights need to be canceled.
The government is still allowing domestic flights, but warning airlines they must not fly between 9pm and 4am in order to abide by the current curfew.
New Thai government restrictions due to rising cases of Covid-19 will affect anyone traveling in and out of what the government is calling ‘dark red zones’ — zones of the country with the highest Covid-19 case loads.
These include Bangkok, the city’s five surrounding provinces and four southern provinces.
Anyone in these areas is being asked to cancel travel plans and restrict unnecessary movement until the number of cases begins to fall.