The Ministry of Transport of Thailand asked Prime Minister Prayut to set up a committee chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Anudin to determine whether the expansion of Suvarnabhumi International Airport to the north requires the construction of a new passenger terminal.

The government’s economic thinking declined. The National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB) rejected the second terminal project proposed by the Airport of Thailand (AOT), and the Prime Minister of Thailand took this action.

In a letter to Thailand Airport on October 29, the National Economic and Social Development Commission confirmed its previous decision and rejected the project on the grounds that a new terminal will cost more than the expansion of the existing terminal. The existing terminal can accommodate an additional 30 million passengers each year.

However, Transport Minister Sachsam Chijob did support the need to build a second terminal and claimed that if a third runway was added, the existing terminal would not be able to cope with the 60 million additional passengers each year. the amount.

The minister said that in order to cope with the future increase in passenger flow, the expansion of runway capacity and the construction of aprons must be implemented together with the new terminal.

When the Economic and Social Development Commission rejected the Thai airport project, it claimed that if the Thai airport continues to be constructed, it may face liquidity problems from 2022 to 2024, because in the same period, the Thai airport will also need funds to develop other airports. Such as Don Muang Airport and Chiang Mai Airport.

The Economic and Social Development Committee also cited the forecasts of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA), predicting that global air passenger traffic in 2020 will drop by 50% to 60% compared to 2019, and will resume in the next four years To the level of 2019.

The think tank went on to say that there is still a high degree of uncertainty in the COVID pandemic, and therefore, Thai airports must invest carefully.Editor/Huang Lijun