Chai Eamsiri, CEO of Thailand’s flag carrier Thai Airways, discusses the airline's expansion plans. He also explains why Thai Airways is not looking to purchase Embraer or COMAC jets to boost their narrow-body fleet.

Bangkok

Thai Airways is moving forward with its fleet and network expansion plans, even as the industry faces global aircraft shortages and a decrease in Chinese tourist arrivals. The airline has secured additional Airbus A321neo aircraft, with deliveries expected to begin soon and continue into the following year. Despite increased leasing costs compared to the pandemic period, Thai Airways states that long-term leasing expenses have returned to near pre-pandemic levels and that it does not currently face pilot or crew shortages.

The airline has reported a 4.2% increase in passengers carried in the recent quarter, attributing this growth to connecting traffic from markets outside China, such as Europe, Australia, and India. While direct tourism from China remains below previous levels, Thai Airways continues to see growth in other regions and is focusing on maintaining a streamlined fleet to control costs.

Thai Airways announces fleet and network expansion

You've got Chinese tourist arrivals starting to soften. You are considering, I know, continuing to expand the fleet, but, you know, I want to ask you, you and many other airlines around the world are facing a shortage of aircraft and for Tsai, a shortage of pilots as well. How are you dealing with both of those issues? Actually, before the pandemic, before the rehabilitation plan, we had about 1,400 pilots. At that time, we needed only 500, but we kept more than what we needed at that time because we know that in the future, the pilots are the most crucial human resources that we need in the future. Then we kept more than we needed at that time. Now we don't have any problem with the pilots, number of pilots, and even the cabin crew. The second is we know that right now we're facing a lot of supply disruption, especially the new aircraft production was delayed, but we'll be able to overcome this problem by We already secured a short-haul barrel body aircraft, which will be coming starting from the end of this year and until next year. At the end of next year, we will be receiving an additional 17 of Airbus A321neo, which will be serving especially for this region. Mr. M. Sri, I want to talk about the plane shortages that have halted or perhaps restricted your expansion plans after you're out of this rehabilitation period that Martin was talking about. It's also seemed one of the options perhaps is going into the leasing market, but it's also been reported that leasing costs for planes have also risen. How much has it risen right now and how much of a cost burden is that perhaps putting on Thai Airways if you have to go to the leasing market to meet these fleet shortages while you're waiting for the planes to be delivered, sir? Actually the leasing market, we have to divide it into two stages. Of course the market for leasing came down during the pandemic and now it came back almost the same level as pre-pandemic. Actually if you look long term, the leasing cost has not increased that much because during the pandemic, it's unusual circumstances. It goes back to almost the same level of pandemics. But comparing to the short term, maybe 30-40% increase from during the pandemic until now. If it's a matter of just meeting the narrow body jets or increasing your fleet, how open is Thai Airways to considering other plane makers, the likes of say Brazil's Embraer, even Comac for instance from China. Are these in your considerations when you look at possible options to expand the fleet as well, especially because the big two, Airbus and Boeing, as you've mentioned, seem to be having a difficulty at least meeting demand right now? We don't have any problem with the narrow body aircraft because we are secure from the leasing market. In total, we have 52 narrow body. The new one will be 32 of the Airbus A321neo. We don't have any problem with the narrow body aircraft for the time being. To bring in another one aircraft type, it will be causing us more cost because we try to minimize the aircraft type and variation of the aircraft that will give us more cost competitiveness. I want to get your thoughts on the actual trends with regards to tourism in Thailand given you do operate the flagship carrier. We've noted that there's been a concerning decline in tourism coming into Thailand. It's really impacted one of its most important industries. At the same time, we're seeing that Thai Airways has reported a 4.2% increase in passengers carried in the second quarter. It seems that you're not just weathering the decline in tourism, but you're actually able to increase the number of people flying. Is this just really an effect of coming off a low base? Is this you actually being able to create more demand or attract more passengers from other places? Or is this just a sign that Thais are actually traveling more? What's driving the increase of passengers for Thai Airways that's going against the grain of this decline in tourism, sir? Actually, the big decline was contributed by the Chinese market. But the rest of the market, like European, Australia, Australia, Asia, and India, they're still growing. Thai Airways operate to China, nowhere near the capacity in the past. But more than that, most of the Chinese people that we carry, most of them are not terminated in Bangkok. They fly from China into Thailand and connect from Bangkok to other areas, other regions. So that's why we can see the number increase, but that's because of connecting passengers rather than the point-to-point passengers.

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