National—
At 9:20 PM, on April 9th, 2024, Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin unofficially inspected Suvarnabhumi Airport in readiness to facilitate incoming tourists during the Songkran Festival.
Previously, Srettha had unofficially inspected Suvarnabhumi Airport in February following up slow airport services.
Upon Srettha’s arrival, he inspected the check-in system and found that the airport management had improved its service times overall, with the average departure flyer spending three hours at the airport from arrival to flying out versus four hours previously.
Furthermore, Srettha checked the airport immigration police system that exempted facial and fingerprint scanning for Thai people as their information was already in the system. The total departure processing time was reduced by 15 minutes from this exemption.
Pol. Maj. Gen. Choengron Rimpadee, the commander of the Suvarnabhumi immigration officers, reportedly affirmed that the immigration system would not fail like it had previously after a large update had been applied which saw overall improvement in its performance. As for arrival passengers, the airport would keep the maximum waiting time for immigration checkpoints to 45 minutes.
Pol. Maj. Gen. Choengron added that the upcoming and improved Thailand Immigration system (TIS) would be an integration between immigration and Suvarnabhumi Airport officers. The TIS was pending approval from the Royal Thai Police.
However, for departure passengers after 10 PM, it was reported that a long queue was formed as only 28 out of 117 airlines were ready for the automatic self-check-in system, causing many passengers to wait in a long queue at airline counter services, according to Suvarnabhumi director Kittipong Kittikachorn.
Overall, Srettha was satisfied with the airport service and believed that in July, the airport system as a whole would be drastically improved.
