ATTA adds airport office

Association of Thai Travel Agents says it will reopen an office at Don Mueang Airport to serve meet-and-greet services required by its member companies.
Speaking at the association’s monthly meeting Thursday, ATTA vice president Chidchai Sakornbadee said the association was in the process of fitting out a new office at the passenger arrivals building on the ground floor of Don Mueang Airport (DMK).
“It will help our members to serve their customers who are arriving or departing through Don Mueang Airport,” he said.
On average, there are 100,000 travellers passing through the airport annually booked through member travel agencies and requiring ground handling services.
ATTA closed its office at Don Mueang when flights were diverted to Suvarnabhumi Airport in 2006.
The office will be ready in October in time for the start of the tourist peak season, when Bangkok is expected to welcome record visitor arrivals. It will also help ATTA to collect data on international visitors handled by its members at the airport. At the moment it only collects data at Suvarnabhumi Airport.
“Don Mueang Airport is now poised to become the country’s second international gateway… our office project will be responding to its expanding role,” he said.
Don Mueang, one of the oldest airports in Asia, opened for commercial flights in 1924 and closed officially in September 2006. It was later reopened to limited domestic services and charters in March 2007 and the Yingluck government reinstated it as Bangkok’s second international airport in March 2012.
During its heyday the airport handled 38 million passengers a year, making it the second busiest airport in Asia.
Airports of Thailand has allocated around Bt3,500 million to improve terminal two and another Bt6,500 million to upgrade terminal one, runways and parking bays to accommodate Airbus A380s.
Work on refurbishing terminal 2 will be completed by 2016. All flights at Don Mueang are now using terminal 1. Terminal 2 and the former domestic terminal have not been used since Suvarnabhumi Airport opened in September 2006.

Once terminal two is ready it should help to take some of the traffic pressure on Suvarnabhumi Airport.

Last November after AirAsia moved all of its regional services out of Suvarnabhumi. Of all the domestic airlines, only THAI and Bangkok Airways continue to serve their domestic networks from Suvarnabhumi, due to the need to provide connecting services for their international flights.

Sourced: ttrweekly