New airport at Bangkok

[geriatrix]

One of the Thai forums has a thread with some great pictures of the new airport being built at Bangkok. It seems to be some sort of inauguration or training day. If anyone reads Thai perhaps they can clarify the occasion.

http://tinyurl.com/mzg2e

Warning: this will take a while to load as there are lots of pictures. Move down past the first screen or so of Thai text.

[houseofraaaa]

According to a friend of mine whose sisters work for Thai the airport is still some way off opening - the photos would confirm this. I believe it should have opened quite some time ago although when I was in BKK recently I saw an ad for it that suggested it had been open for some time!!!

Does anybody have any info on the runway because I heard there were some issues with this.

[Bangkokeasy]

The occasion of the post was the landing at the airport of the Thai Prime Minister, Taksin Shinawatra, on September 29th 2005.

He did this to prove that the airport was, in fact, open on the due date of September 30th.

However, it, err... wasn't and err.... isn't.

The due date for opening is now June this year, although speaking to professionals who are involved in installing equipment for the airport, they doubt this date. My personal guess is that the actual opening date may be December 5th, which is HM the King of Thailand's birthday and thus a suitably auspicious date. There has been no hint of a change of target date as yet, though.

As for the runway, lucky this is an anonymous forum! Officially, there was nothing ever wrong with it. Unoficially, of course, there was. There were apparently, machines finishing the relaying of parts of one of the runways still in action as the PM's plane touched down on the other one. But, attempts to report this last year weremet with a barrage of legal action, resulting in at least one senior journo in Thailand losing his job. This despite the fact that the story was backed up by a large photo of officials examining cracks in the new runway.

Settling in the runway can be expected. For, despite the fact that Suvarnabhumi airport is about 20km inland, it is built on a swampy flood plain and had to be extensively reclaimed. The name, before it was given its new title, was "Nong ngu how", which roughly translated, means "cobra infested swamp".

[Bangkokeasy]

Chatting the other day to a couple of friends who are involved in the civil engineering, as well as software installation, for the new airport, it would seem concensus is building toward sometime at the end of 2006 as the date for it to become operational.

[asianfly]

Thanks for that Bangkokeasy.
Do you know the story with Don Muang...will they keep the existing airport in operation once the new one opens. Talk was that the freight and LoCo guys would operate from there, but not sure how accurate that is. Any update?

[Bangkokeasy]

With the current political mess in Thailand, the opening date of the new airport has gone off most people's radar screens. My money is still on December 5th. Last I heard also, was that the old airport would be used for locos.

One of the drivers for the current turmoil is the raft of allegations over graft associated with the airport project. For example, key officials are said to have benefitted from hefty mark-ups on luggage scanning equipment and rumour has it, that the ruling TRT party may have received around US$20million for approving the contract for the new airport hotel.

The likely outcome is that, should Mr Taksin be re-elected, the opening date will go ahead as I indicate above, if not sooner. However, should he be ousted, then I would expect there to be a delay, while the incoming ministers pick over the bones of the contracts to see if there are any remaining items that can be milked for cash. That would effectively push the opening date into 2007.