Not CATC
Ozthai,
Different mission. No defense at all for PAX, but CATC-HH is not the answer. Nakhon Phanom was set up to draw students regionally and internationally. CATC's mission is to develop the personnel for the Thai aviation industry.
They're totally incapable of training international students (except for the occassional stray Laotian) because of the language issue and the funky little regulations about having foreigners employed by a state enterprise (even paying anything but a Thai civil servant salary with no benefits). Money is not the issue, as they regularly make decisions to avoid extra revenue. There are plenty of aircraft laying around already. Having the Airbus sim from Isaan would only put them into competition with their primary customer, TG.
If somebody's trying to jumpstart an aviation training industry in Thailand, they've got no choice but to drop CATC's status as a state enterprise or allow some other schmoe to try and get one rolling. They did the same thing with FA training and general aviation management degrees (let a well-known state university open a program to compete with CATC) and that worked out pretty well, with a lot of FA's placing with overseas carriers, and other grads supplying airport services and the miniscule BizAv market locally.
Based on reports, rumors, and some illustrative postings here, it's just too bad that they chose the place and people they did to expand flight crew training.