Will Thailand Become Asia’s Next Aviation Hub?

With air passenger traffic expecting to triple in the Asia-Pacific region over the next two decades, industry experts are now considering Thailand as a potential aviation hub! Thailand is soon to become a great competitor to Singapore. Government agencies, investment organizations and big business organizations in Thailand are ready to invest their resources and effort together through private and public partnerships to make Thailand Asia’s next major aviation hub.

The Development Plan

In February 2017, the Ministry of Transport in Thailand revealed a development plan between 2017 and 2031 split into three phases. The first phase between 2017 and 2021 will basically focus on creating a new maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) center for Thailand Airways. The second phase between 2021 and 2026 will focus on expanding the MRO center. The third and final phase will focus on renovating Thailand’s entire aviation design and manufacturing capabilities.

The Execution

The Board of Investment of Thailand recently invited a group of journalists from all over the world on a four-day tour of Thailand’s involvement in the above mentioned development plan. This is actually a part of a broader plan to develop public and private industrial potentialities around manufacturing embedded electronics, smarter cars, robotics and other corresponding technologies. During the tour, the Board of Investment of Thailand announced a plan to invest around $6 billion into expanding both the runway and aircraft and developing the maintenance capacity at major airports in Thailand serving the big cities in Thailand and Pattaya.

Thailand started to mark them as one of the Asia’s major aviation hubs 50 years ago when the airport was first constructed with the help of the U.S. Air Force to support its involvement in the Vietnam War. During 2014-2016, the number of annual passengers in the Thailand Airport jumped from 16,800 to 75,000. After that, the airport was transitioned into a joint civil-military airport. To support the passenger expansion, Thailand Airport authority has started to complete the terminal two, which is now nearing completion.

Future Core Capabilities

Thai Airways is now busy in finalizing plans for the current MRO facility at the airport and it will soon introduce the use of drones to inspect aircraft fuselages for structural damages. The international carrier is also willing to improve the abilities of Thai Airports in terms of preparing the aircraft MRO activities for its own airplanes landing at U-Tapao. Also, repair and overhaul of auxiliary power units (APU) is going to be a future core capability of Thailand’s aviation industry.

Previously, Singapore did an excellent job of making themselves the international hub for all the OEMs and MRO shops. What Thailand has started to do is to create a great place to build and grow airline business, and it will certainly be exciting to watch the future unfold.

Everything You Need To Know About The U.S. Air Traffic System Reform

On February 9th 2017, President Donald Trump held a meeting with U.S. airline and airport authorities to discuss a wide range of topics. The primary agenda of the meeting was to focus on the issues that have divided several segments of the flight operational community over the past few years.

Below we have outlined the most important highlights from the meeting.

FAA Structure Could Change Under the New Administration:

During the meeting on February 9th between aviation executives and President Trump, all airlines stated the need for new management of the FAA’s billion-dollar effort to upgrade the entire air traffic system. They also claimed that a newly formed non-profit corporation could be able to receive the upgrade completed faster and would provide more noticeable benefits to airports as well as airspace users.

Privatization as an Integral Part of the U.S. ATC System:

Privatization has become the latest talk in major media outlets as well as among the aviation leaders to describe the proposed overhaul of the FAA. On the other hand, the supporters of the proposal to restructure the FAA have already mentioned that private companies are used as contractors by the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization (ATO) to staff some of the U.S. Air Traffic Control (ATC) towers.

The Transition Would Take Several Years:

There will be more detailed information available about the proposal to reconstruct the FAA in March, when the administration is likely to release its first annual budget request. The budget may include funding to establish a non-profit corporation responsible for handling air traffic and air traffic modernization deployment. However, it is also true that the funding would not become available until October 2017. As a result, the time required to implement the new structure could be lengthier than other nations that have utilized similar strategies.

User Fees Would Mean a Major Shift in U.S. Air Traffic Operations:

At present, the United States air traffic system is mainly financed by taxpayer dollars and is attached to budget authorizations from lawmakers. One of the major concerns mentioned by the industry advocacy groups in opposition to the proposed reform is that the new nonprofit corporation is going to establish user fees for airspace operators. However, President Trump expressed opposition to this aspect of the proposed reform.

The FAA Has a Major Contribution in Upgrading The Air Traffic System:

One of the most important points for reform expressed by industry groups is that the deployment of NextGen is over budget and is taking too long to be implemented. Also, it doesn’t offer any major noticeable benefits for airspace users. On the other hand, FAA had a major contribution in upgrading Air Traffic system between 2014 and 2016, despite budget uncertainties.