February 26, 2024
BANGKOK – Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin made an unannounced check of operations at Suvarnabhumi Airport on Saturday and found the arrival and departure passenger procedures were still disappointing.
Srettha announced on his X account on Saturday night that he had made another surprise inspection at Suvarnabhumi Airport on Saturday evening to follow up on his first unannounced inspection on February 5 in the morning.
“I came to check the service systems at Suvarnabhumi Airport without informing the airport in advance after I made a similar check in the morning. So, today I came to check in the evening and there were plenty of passengers,” Srettha posted on his X page.
The prime minister said he found that both the arrival and departure procedures were too long.
“I counted the time since a passenger got off a vehicle and entered the check-in system and passed through the security system to reach his terminal to wait for boarding.
“And for arrivals, I counted from passengers’ exiting their plane and coming to the immigration counters. I checked all the procedures in detail and found that they took a long time.”
Srettha said that he had asked the officials in charge if they could reduce the time taken. “The answer was that the processing time was uncertain,” Srettha said.
“This has to be improved urgently,” the prime minister added.
Srettha said he would like the executives of both the Airports of Thailand Plc and the Immigration Bureau to go out to check the procedures during the peak hours by themselves so that they could find out what caused the bottleneck.
“I’ll make a surprise check at the airport to check the procedures in detail again,” Srettha said in the post.
“We are trying to push Thailand into an aviation hub and we are opening doors to foreign tourists, so I would like operation officials to be service-minded and take care of the tourists so that they will be impressed from the time they get out of their planes.”
Srettha said he hoped the officials would regard obstacles as challenges, not problems, so the country’s tourism would improve.