Thai rail to axe Suvarnabhumi airport check in at Makkasan Station

News in Asia
Thai rail to axe Suvarnabhumi airport check in at Makkasan Station

The boss of Bangkok’s Airport Rail Link says the company plans to axe passenger check-in services for Suvarnabhumi Airport at Makkasan Station. General Thawatchai Samutsakorn told media sources that the service costs THB7 million a month to run yet is only used by an average of 600 passengers a month currently.

The Suvarnabhumi check-in services at Makkasan are managed by SRT Electrified Train (SRTET). The station is one of the key ones on the Airport Rail Link and has an interchange with the MRT underground system.

Check-in services at the station were introduced in January 2011. Thai carriers Bangkok Airways and Thai Airways were the first to take advantage of it, but the former scrapped the option after just four months saying that hardly anybody used it.

Thai Airways hung on for another two years before it bailed out too. General Samutsakorn said the main reason the Makkasan Station check-in service seemed to have failed was that its central location made it difficult to get to.

He explained that travellers preferred to travel straight to Suvarnabhumi rather than face Bangkok’s legendary traffic jams in trying to reach a downtown station. The general said any action on the service would take place once the SRTET’s and the State Railway of Thailand’s assets were formally separated.

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