Over the weekend, the new terminal at Phuket international Airport opened for a trial run and received its first ever passengers. Although the much-needed and much-awaited terminal has been a long time coming, the island’s only airport will soon be able to manage almost double the arrivals it currently handles.
Arriving at the new terminal at 12:55pm on the 14th February, the airport serviced 337 passengers from Hong Kong on one of THAI Airways’ daily flights, TG609. Many officials were present for the trial, such as Nitinai Sirismatthakarn, the President of Airports of Thailand (AoT).
“This exercise today confirms the new terminal is operationally ready, but there is still some finishing touches to go, which will be complete in time for the grand opening on June 1,” said Mr Nitinai. “The entire upgrade is to expand Phuket Airport’s capacity to 12.5 million per year. And the airport can receive about 50,000 arrivals each day.”
It seems that everything ran smoothly for the test launch of the new terminal at Phuket International Airport, which will undergo other trials until its full opening in May 2016.
