Bangkok’s number two airport to reopen
After a more than four-month closure:
BANGKOK: Bangkok’s second largest airport will reopen this
week after a more than four-month closure owing to the kingdom’s worst
floods in decades, an official said Monday. “We are 100-percent ready to
resume services on Tuesday,” the general manager of Don Mueang
International Airport in the north of the city, Kanputt Mungklasiri,
told AFP.
The airport, which had been used for some domestic flights, suspended
commercial operations in late October as the floods spilled into the
capital. The runways were submerged, but Kanputt said all the facilities
had now been restored to normal.
So far, however, only Nok Air, one of the two main airlines
previously operating at Don Mueang, has announced a move back from the
main airport Suvarnabhumi, which is located to the east of the capital
and was not flooded.
The other carrier, Orient Thai, plans to stay at Suvarnabhumi because
it does not want to move its base again, the Bangkok Post
English-language daily reported, quoting group founder Udom
Tantiprasongchai.
The airport also doubled as a temporary evacuee shelter and a
headquarters for the government’s flood relief operation until it was
inundated.
AFP |