The air route Bangkok-Vientiane is now served by Bangkok Airways, the fourth airline present on Vientiane’s busiest air route.
BANGKOK- Bangkok Airways launched its daily flight to Vientiane on December 1st, becoming the fourth airline to serve the Bangkok-Vientiane route. The Bangkok Airways’ route was announced in September. Bangkok Airways has been flying since 2002 to Laos, serving by one or two daily flights the UNESCO world heritage city of Luang Prabang. It also started a flight to Pakse in Southern Laos during 2007 but was forced to withdraw from the route less than a year later, due to poor load factors.
The new PG flight to Vientiane will depart from Bangkok at 0815 and arrive in Vientiane at 0930. The return flight will depart at 1010 and arrive in Bangkok at 1125.
Flights are served with an Airbus A319. The regional carrier is however not the only one to serve the much coveted Bangkok-Vientiane route. They are six daily frequencies between both capitals including two daily flights from Thai Airways International, two other flights from Lao Airlines and one daily frequency from new private Lao carrier Central Lao Airlines.
Thai AirAsia has been seeking to serve Laos for now five years but its demand has always been turned down by local authorities in Laos, as they feared that the low cost carrier could jeopardize most of the traffic to Bangkok served by the national airline Lao Aviation. However, these discriminatory measures from the Laotian government are likely to be abolished for ASEAN carriers, following the completion of ASEAN Economic Community in 2015 or early 2016.
Luc Citrinot a French national is a freelance journalist and consultant in tourism and air transport with over 20 years experience. Based in Paris and Bangkok, he works for various travel and air transport trade publications in Europe and Asia.
