Thai Airways International has confirmed that its new business division will launch services in July 2012 under the Thai Smile Air brand. The start-up carrier has been tentatively dubbed Thai Wings since the national carrier first revealed its plans to establish the venture earlier this year. The airline will be positioned as a low-to-medium-cost carrier between the mainline operation and low-cost venture Nok Air, but will not be a standalone operation like Nok Air but an internal business unit.
Thai Smile Air will commence operations with four leased Airbus 320s, increasing its fleet to eleven aircraft in the future. These will initially be used to start services to domestic destinations such as Chiang Rai, Khon Kaen, Surat Thani, Ubon Ratchathani and Udon Thani from a base at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport before expanding into the international market in 2013 serving locations in Southeast Asia, China and India.
The airline will offer a two-class product and will serve a mix of existing and new destinations using Thai’s existing ‘TG’ flight code. But, with a lower cost structure than its parent, Thai Smile Air will able to fly to a number of locations that cannot be served profitably by the mainline division, or serve existing routes more efficiently. According to reports likely destinations it will serve include Amritsar, Brunei, Danang, Medan and Penang.
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