Air Asia to introduce Bangkok-Vientiane route in July

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Air Asia to introduce Bangkok-Vientiane route in July

Post by Gaybutton »

Thai AirAsia to inaugurate flights to Vientiane in July

by: Boonsong Kositchotethana

14 Apr 2016

Thai AirAsia (TAA) looks set to start serving Vientiane as the second city in Laos, which until recently was largely off-limits to low-cost carriers (LCCs).

TAA will become the first no-frills airline to operate on the Bangkok-Vientiane route when it launches daily flights in July.

The Vientiane start-up follows TAA's successful entry to Luang Prabang. The airline commenced a daily service from Bangkok on March 24, becoming the first LCC to serve the old royal city.

ML Bovornovadep Devakula, director of business development at SET-listed Asia Aviation Plc, the major shareholder of TAA, has confirmed securing the rights to start the Vientiane flight from Laotian authorities.

"There is greater understanding among [Laotian] officials now about the role of airlines in driving tourism and economic activities, which Laos now seriously wants to promote," ML Bovornovadep told the Bangkok Post.

Serving the capital cities of Asean states has been the main strategy for network expansion in the region for TAA.

"When it comes to flying to a country, we normally make sure that we descend on the capital city and then to another tourist spot," he said.

But Laos is a different story, presumably because its authorities place higher priority on promoting tourism in Luang Prabang, especially at the end of the high season, and TAA's entry there would have the biggest impact, said the executive.

TAA aims to attract many Thais who normally travel to the Laotian capital by catching a domestic flight from Bangkok to Udon Thani before travelling by road to Vientiane.

"We believe there will be a lot of people who want to fly directly to Vientiane, avoiding hassles, cutting travel time and saving travel costs related to multi-mode transportation," he said.

"We think we can fly them directly with a fare of only 1,500 baht [one-way]," he added.

Laos' Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism estimated there were 4.3 million international tourist arrivals to the landlocked state last year, an increase of 4.88% from 4.1 million in 2014, generating US$670 million in revenue.

Thai nationals represented the majority of those arrivals, followed by Vietnamese and Chinese.

An initial schedule listing on air route websites is for a TAA flight leaving Bangkok's Don Mueang airport at 12.05pm, arriving at Vientiane's Wattay airport 1.25pm. The return flight departs Wattay at 2.15pm and arrives at Don Mueang at 3.35pm.

TAA has no plans to fly other cities in Laos as the airline wants to concentrate on Luang Prabang and Vientiane, ML Bovornovadep said.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/transpo ... ne-in-july
Jun

Re: Air Asia to introduce Bangkok-Vientiane route in July

Post by Jun »

Welcome competition.

The existing direct flights have been priced at monopolistic levels.
To counter that, on my first Laos trip, I flew to Udon Thani, & enjoyed a night in Nong Khai before taking local transport to Vientiane.
On a more recent trip in the other direction, I tried the Nok air fly-drive. They managed the minibus collection in Vientiane OK, then a Thai mini bus is supposed to collect us on the Thai side of the border. This did not show. Thankfully the other passenger was an English speaking Thai & he phoned them to sort it out, via a Tuk Tuk to the local travel agent and another minibus. I cannot recommend this shambolic service, although anyone travelling in the Udon-Thani==> Vientiane direction can very easily arrange an independent version, with a minibus to the border & local transport afterwards.

So bring on Air Asia.
Then, unless you are very hard up, pay the small fee for the premium service.
Dodging the DMK check in queue is a sufficient payback for this expenditure, then you can also get a good choice of seat & a meal included.
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Re: Air Asia to introduce Bangkok-Vientiane route in July

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Jun wrote:Then, unless you are very hard up, pay the small fee for the premium service.
Dodging the DMK check in queue is a sufficient payback for this expenditure, then you can also get a good choice of seat & a meal included.
Also, unless you intend to return to Thailand on the 30 day privilege, don't forget to get a reentry permit before you go.

Regarding seats and premium service, if you buy your ticket online, for a small fee you can pre-select your seat and arrange a meal.

What most people have been doing when flying from Bangkok is to fly to Udon Thani and then take a bus from the Udon Thani airport to the Friendship Bridge, and then enter Laos after jumping through the hoops at the bridge. The bus trip between the airport to the bridge is about an hour and a half. That's longer than the flight. The price Air Asia is offering from Bangkok non-stop to Vientiane is on par with their price of a flight to Udon Thani. It's also only 100 baht more expensive than the least expensive price Thai Airways-Thai Smile offers for Bangkok-Udon Thani.

The price of a ticket for a non-stop flight between Bangkok and Vientiane on Lao Airlines is well over 6000 baht.

In other words, Air Asia is offering a damned good deal. Lao Airlines is going to have quite a tough time competing.

What we don't know yet is how many flights per day Air Asia is going to offer, whether they'll have flights every day, and the flight times.
Jun

Re: Air Asia to introduce Bangkok-Vientiane route in July

Post by Jun »

Good point. Flight times could kill it.

When on holiday, if the chosen Air Asia flight is 7:00am out of DMK, I'm suddenly prepared to pay more and accept some other compromises for an option with a more civilised flight time.
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Re: Air Asia to introduce Bangkok-Vientiane route in July

Post by Gaybutton »

Jun wrote:Flight times could kill it.
For example, Air Asia offers a once-a-day non-stop from Pattaya's U-Tapao airport to Udon Thani for fares that can be as low as 690 baht. The trouble is the flight leaves at 7:55am. You're supposed to be at the airport one hour before flight time, so you need to be at the airport by 7:00am. It's a 45 minute drive from Pattaya to the U-Tapao airport, so you need to be ready to leave Pattaya by around 6:00am. And to be ready to leave by 6:00am, you would probably need to wake up about 5:00am.

It's an excellent price, but it's not exactly the most attractive flight time. We'll just have to wait and see what time the Bangkok-Vientiane, Vientiane-Bangkok flights go. Hopefully, there will be more than one flight per day at more popular flight times.
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