Orient Thai Airlines has revised its business plan by cutting domestic flights operated by its low-cost subsidiary One-Two-Go and focusing more on chartered flight operations due to lower passenger numbers.
Airline founder and chief executive officer Udom Tantiprasongchai said One-Two-Go had reduced the number of daily flights by more than half to 14. Reduced were the flight frequencies from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Phuket, Hat Yai and Trang.
Load factors of the flights were 50 per cent, the lowest compared to that of previous low seasons.
It is also temporarily halting operations between Bangkok-Nakhon Si Thammarat and Bangkok-Surat Thani for the same reason. The airline, however, will resume the two routes as well as operate a new route Bangkok- Krabi in the coming high season.
One-Two-Go has laid off 400 staff and asked the remaining 600 staff to take leave without pay or cut their working days. Most of the employees have seen a 25-per-cent cut in their salaries.
One-Two-Go recently rebranded itself as One-Two-Go by Orient Thai, and is now fully under the parent company's control. This brings it into compliance with international aviation law, which specifies that airlines should have their own aircraft.
Before this, One-Two-Go operated with aircraft borrowed from the parent company. The low-cost airline was subjected to tough investigation following the September 2007 crash in Phuket that killed nearly 100 passengers. It was then found that One-Two-Go had no aircraft of its own.
Udom said the Department of Civil Aviation had returned the operating license to One-Two-Go.
Moving into its seventh year of operations, Orient Thai Airlines will also focus on chartered flights servicing mainly overseas destinations. It also hopes to resume regular flights in neighbouring countries such as Malaysia and Burma, Udom said.
He said Thailand's commercial aviation industry had slowed along with the downturn in global business. While foreign tourists dropped on concerns about political problems, domestic travellers this year will also drop from a projection of 15 million to 8 million.
To woo back domestic travellers, the airline is launching a promotion called Siam Pass. Until the end of October, travellers can buy three types of air passes: Bt15,000 for a one-month ticket, Bt28,000 for a two-month ticket and Bt39,000 for a three-month pass. These allow an unlimited number of trips on One-Two-Go domestic flights in the period.
The airline said it expected to earn Bt2 billion in total revenue this year, mostly from chartered flights.