SOUTH-EAST ASIA: Thai Air Disaster May Hit Budget Carriers

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Sep 18 2007 (IPS) - As investigations began to unearth the cause behind Sunday’s crash of a budget airliner in the Thai resort of Phuket, enthusiasm among South-east Asian budget tourists and travellers for low-cost carriers appears to have dampened.

Among those with second thoughts is Juliana Toh, 20, a Singapore resident. Till Saturday, Sep. 15, she had set her sights on flying to Phuket with three friends on a low-cost carrier for a holiday. But then came news of One-Two-Go’s disaster in which 89 passengers died. ‘’We were shocked and scared by what we heard,’’ Toh, a freelance production assistant, said in a telephone interview from the affluent city-state. ‘’My friends and I are now considering if it is safe to fly on these budget airlines.’’

It is a view that was echoed in reports appearing in Thai newspapers on Tuesday. ‘’Budget airlines could suffer a 20 percent drop in the number of passengers over the next few months as travellers become more concerned about aviation safety,’’ reported ‘The Nation,’ an English-language daily. The paper quoted a source in the aviation industry as saying that passengers on low-cost airlines will worry about safety and security measures after the crash.

Yet the Thai founder and chief executive of One-Two-Go airlines attempted to play down the impact of the disaster on budget carriers. ‘’The airline had not suffered as much negative publicity as expected,’’ Udom Tantiprasongchai was quoted in Tuesday’s ‘Bangkok Post’ newspaper. ‘’The fact that most aviation experts initially believed that the incident was caused by force majeure, not technical problems, and that authorities did not order grounding of One-Two-Go, has not stopped people from flying with us.’’

Sunday’s air disaster was the second worst in Thailand, following the December 1988 crash of the national carrier Thai Airways while on a flight to Surat Thani, 330 miles (531 km) south of Bangkok, where 101 people were killed. The One-Two-Go flight had 123 passengers on board, a majority of them foreigners, heading to the ‘jewel of Thai beach resorts’ for a holiday.

Till the accident in Phuket, a number of low-cost carriers in Indonesia and a Thai one, Phuket Air, were targeted for safety reasons. The European Union (EU) decided to ban a number of Indonesian airlines early this year out of concern for passenger safety; Phuket Air was also banned in 2005 from flying to some European destinations.

Little of that, however, had dampened the enthusiasm among South-east Asians to explore parts of their own region by travelling on low-cost carriers. This change in air travel among the 550 million people of this region began with the arrival of the Malaysia-based low-cost airline Air Asia six years ago. Soon, similar carriers mushroomed in other countries of the region to tap a larger market than a narrow affluent slice of society.

‘’Budget airlines have made a significant contribution to tourism growth in Thailand, particularly the regional traffic in the last five years. They have also helped to link up many regional cities,’’ says Imtiaz Muqbil, executive editor of the ‘Travel Impact Newswire,’ a Bangkok-based travel industry publication. ‘’Budget airlines have made it possible for regional travellers to take holidays more frequently.’’

Such traffic within South-east Asia’s ten countries also helped to bring a vast region separated by stretches of sea much closer, he explained during an interview. ‘’This part of the world has benefited from budget airlines due to its desire to bring the countries closer together culturally, socially and politically.’’

This year, the 40-year-old Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) revealed its new constitution for its 10 members, which include Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The new charter sets stronger regional bonds among its citizens as one of its goals.

Capturing such sentiments is Girard Bonoten, 27, a writer from the Philippines who credits budget airlines with helping him to travel more frequently and also visit neighbouring countries. ‘’I use budget airlines regularly,’’ Bonoten, who recently arrived in Thailand, told IPS.

‘’I know many families in the Philippines who are taking holidays to Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok because of the cheaper fares; earlier such travel was only limited to the rich,’’ he added. ‘’This is also the case domestically with people flying from the south to the north of the Philippines on budget carriers rather than take boats.’’

No wonder an editorial in The Nation urged investigators of the crash to examine if the disaster happened because the airline failed to meet all standards of ‘’airworthiness of its aircraft, the competence of its pilots and crew members, aircraft maintenance and all other air-safety standards’’.

‘’A question that also needs to be asked is whether Orient-Thai Airlines (the operator of One-Two-Go) has the kind of corporate culture that attaches great importance to passenger and operational safety,’’ the editorial said.