Flight chaos

Who would have imagined it would be possible for anyone to occupy Suvarnabhumi Airport? Even PM Somchai Wongsawat wasn't aware of the gathering storm in Bangkok. Early on Tuesday morning when I departed for Rangoon at 6am, several hundred protesters had already gone to seize Don Mueang Airport.

I heard about the closure of the airports on the TV news transmitted from Thailand's terrestrial channels, which can be seen in Rangoon. Around 9pm, Thai TV reported that PAD protesters were marching to Suvarnabhumi and the airport would be shut down.

After that, the last place you wanted to be was the Thai Airways International office. Crowds of passengers were there inquiring of the staff about the prospects of the airports re-opening, to which the Thai Airways officials frankly responded that they did not know.

I anxiously waited to see what Somchai would say or do after he came back from Peru. However, instead of showing leadership to assure Thais that he would deal with the closure of Suvarnabhumi Airport, Somchai spent time boasting about his Peruvian Apec trip.

Thai Airways staff estimated there were more than 1,000 passengers stranded in Burma due to flight cancellations from Tuesday night to Thursday. Normally, Thai Airways operates two flights a day. Bangkok is the transit destination for passengers going to countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam. A number of Burmese Muslims would also transit in Bangkok to go to the hajj. This is one of the busiest periods on the Bangkok-Rangoon route. Even before the closure of the airport, flights between Bangkok and Rangoon were fully booked until December 9. I was No. 24 of 199 waiting-list passengers for a flight on Wednesday evening.

Since the closure, Thai Airways office in Rangoon has been full of angry passengers. Many Europeans were angry that they could not leave Rangoon because most connecting flights were via Bangkok. And visitors are not permitted to use the credit cards in Burma, even in the big hotels or with airlines.

When the Thai government opened U-tapao Airport on Friday, Thai Airways sent a special flight to pick up stranded passengers. Due to the limited capacity of U-tapao, Thai offices worldwide have to justify to Thai's headquarters why their offices deserve special flights over others.

A number of passengers re-routed, if they could, to get home via Singapore and Malaysia. Air Pagan, which didn't offer any services after Cyclone Nargis, opened a special charter flight for those who desperately wanted to get from Rangoon to U- tapao at a special fare of US$250 (Bt9,000).

I missed the Thai flight on Friday but managed to get a flight early Sunday morning. Hundreds of passengers were waiting in line long before the counter opened. Passengers with connecting flights were not advised to take the flight to Bangkok because Thai could not guarantee if there would be connections available.

By 7.30pm when the counter was closed, there were still a number of passengers left stranded because of the limited capacity. I managed to get on because I decided to pay for a business-class seat. But even with the boarding pass, no one could say exactly what time the plane would depart.

The ground staff told passengers that the flight would be delayed from the original schedule of 7.45pm because of the limited resources at U-tapao. Eventually, the plane left Rangoon at 1.30am on Sunday morning for U-tapao. We arrived, and then had to take a three-hour bus trip to Bangkok.