Thai Airways Delays London Heathrow A380 Debut

Thai Airways International has confirmed an almost year long delay to the introduction of the Airbus A380 on its route between Bangkok and London due to “important technical modifications” to the Super Jumbo. This will mean that the aircraft will not now enter scheduled service on the link to London Heathrow until a tentative date of October 30, 2014.

The airline revealed earlier this year that it planned to debut the aircraft on the London route from December 1, 2013 following the arrival of its fifth and sixth A380s, which were originally due for delivery early in the fourth quarter of this year. The carrier requires two aircraft to fulfill a daily service due to the long sector length of the flight and planned to use the A380 on one rotation and an A340-600 on its second daily service.

It now confirms that it will continue to serve the route with two daily Boeing 747-400 flights through to the end of the summer 2014 schedule when it will revert to the planned A380 and A340-600 operation. “The introduction of the A380 will make flying between London and Bangkok an even more enjoyable and unforgettable experience and we can only apologise for the unforeseen delay,” said the carrier in a statement.

Thai launched operations with the A380 in October 2012 on routes linking Bangkok with Hong Kong and Singapore. The arrival of a second aircraft enabled the introduction of A380 services to Frankfurt from December 2012, while the third aircraft added Tokyo to the A380 network from January 2013 and the fourth supported its introduction to Paris from March this year. The carrier’s A380s are configured in a 507-seat, three-class arrangement with space for 12 passengers in Royal first class, 60 in Royal Silk business class, and 435 in Economy.

The A380 was due to due to debut on the London route at a key time for the Thai carrier. December is the busiest month for travel between Europe and destinations across Southeast Asia and Australasia and the carrier will now face a capacity reduction during a peak travel period. With increasing price competition from the Gulf hub carriers and increased capacity from British Airways (BA) now its London – Bangkok service is a terminating flight rather than connecting directly on to Australia means competition in this predominantly leisure market is intense.

In 2012 an estimated 650,000 bi-directional O&D passengers travelled between Bangkok and London with around 64 per cent of this demand making use of the direct flights of Thai, BA and EVA Air, the latter serving the Thai capital on its flights originating and ending in the Taiwanese capital Taipei. This means that more than a third of passengers travelling between London Heathrow and Bangkok Suvarnabhumi in 2012 made a connection en route, up from one in four travellers in 2006. Interestingly, during this same period Thai’s share of the market has declined from 40.5 per cent to 27.8 per cent, with its annual O&D passenger numbers slipping by 56.7 per cent and its average fares falling 6.0 per cent.

In the table below we highlight the largest bi-directional O&D traffic flows for passengers between London Heathrow and Bangkok Suvarnabhumi in 2012: