Regional Round-Up
THAI cutting routes not staff
February 1st 2015
Thai Airways International (THAI) president, former Stock Exchange of Thailand president, Charumporn Jotikasthira, has announced a two-year recovery plan that will eliminate loss-making domestic and international routes, sell off 22 older aircraft by July, but only involve staff redundancies as a last resort. Read More » THAI has recorded miserable results in 2014 as passengers continued to decline and budget carriers made ever greater inroads into its market, with the carrier now recording load factors approaching 60%.
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Extended political unrest and a poor performance in its domestic and nearby regional markets reduced THAI’s annual passenger numbers from above 20 million a year in 2012 to 17.8 million last year. The new president, who took over in December, must deal with disposing of older aircraft, while taking delivery of new planes that will produce unwanted capacity at the carrier. Apart from a profit for the July-September quarter last year, mainly due to currency gains, THAI has posted losses for six quarters since civil protests in Bangkok took hold in the second half of 2013. The Thai military staged a successful coup d’etat in May last year. The junta will not let THAI fail, analysts who report on THAI said.
