BANGKOK – Having served as Thailand’s air transport hub for six long years, the aged and crumbling Suvarnabhumi Airport is at long last ready to be relieved of its duties, the government announced today.
“It’s never easy to say goodbye, but it’s time to look forward,” said Nirandra Theeranartsin, acting president of Airports of Thailand, as he revealed the bold new proposal for Bangkok’s new airport, scheduled to be opened in 2016 at a cost of ฿230 billion.
Government representatives from the transportation ministry took to the podium to explain the need for a new airport, including the shoddy and dangerous construction in Suvarnabhumi’s main terminal architecture, the lack of bathrooms and ergonomic traffic flow, the chaotic and inadequate Passport Control section, and the fundamental failures in the airport’s foundation.
“It’s time to admit that Suvarnabhumi, while beautiful and historical, was never built to last this long,” said Air Chief Marshal Sukumpol Suwanatat. “We simply didn’t have the technology in 2004 to create an airport for today’s modern international aviation needs.”
The committee also presented slides showing how Suvarnabhumi’s limited capacity for only 47 million arrivals per year was an insufficient improvement over the 38 million capacity of Don Mueang airport which it replaced.
“There was no way to have known in the early 21st century that Thailand would, almost 10 years later, need a bigger airport with greater capacity,” Nirandra noted.
The new airport, tentatively named the Auspicious Seven International Airport in honor of His Majesty’s seventh cycle birthday, will be located on 10,000 acres of land in Nakhon Chai Si which will be expropriated from its current owner, a small holding company registered in the Cayman Islands, at a cost of ฿50 billion.
King Power, the nation’s sole concession holder for duty-free retail, has already agreed to lease the maximum legal amount of space within the new airport, an area whose boundaries will, according to Nirandra, be “strictly enforced.”
