Thai Airways plans to become one of Asia's top 3 carriers again

Thai Airways President, Piyasvasti Amranand stated he is determined to restore the carrier to one of the top three carriers in Asia, and is confident yield will start to improve with the improvement of its product (Business Times, 03-Nov-2009).

• Three key issues: meeting customer needs, being more competitive in terms of costs and financial structure and reacting more quickly to changes in the operating environment;
• Aircraft: purchase or lease four to seven medium haul new aircraft to replace aging A300-600s;
• Route rationalisation:review route network, as Thai "currently operates to many low-yield routes";
• Financial restructuring: will occur in 2010 to increase capital and restructure debt;
• Fuel hedging: more active in fuel hedging "in the context of risk management, not speculation", with existing hedging volumes of 20% insufficient (Bangkok Post, 03-Nov-2009). The carrier now plans to hedge 30% to 70% of its fuel usage.

Thai Airways: "We were one of the best at one time. And we will have to be one of the top three in Asia and top five in the world once again…Average yield should go up as product quality goes up, and we can afford to be more choosy about our customers and reduce the proportion of low-fare customers…I think we need to wait a little longer to be really sure that the yield is moving up. Right now we're probably breaking even, but if we can increase the yield then we can turn to profit, provided the oil price does not rise too much," Piyasvasti Amranand, Thai Airways. Source: Business Times, 03-Nov-2009.