Karun Sirarojanakul, general manager of Thai Airways in Vietnam, told the Daily Monday that all the two daily services operated by the carrier from HCMC from October 31 would have a good connecting time of around one hour with the Europe-bound flights in Bangkok.

Karun explained Thai Airways was not able to connect its current flights departing from HCMC in the morning with the flights from Bangkok in the early afternoon but would make it possible from the winter schedule as these flights would be conducted more than hour earlier, at around 10:20 am.

With the change to departure time, passengers from Thai Airways’ flights from HCMC will arrive at Suvarnabhumi Airport at 11:45 a.m. of the same days so they can board the flights the carrier operates from Bangkok to Europe, either in the early afternoon or in the evening.

Thai Airways has double daily services from Bangkok to London, Munich and Frankfurt, and 10 weekly flights to Paris. The airline currently operates four daily flights from Bangkok to HCMC and Hanoi, making it the biggest foreign full-serviced carrier active in Vietnam in terms of frequencies.

In addition to Europe, Thai Airways is providing passengers in Vietnam with more connecting flights to Australia, Japan and other destinations in Asia as well as elsewhere in the world.

Karun said business people, expatriates living and working in Vietnam and tourists were the key passengers of Thai Airways’ flights from and to Vietnam, and the number of these passengers had been on rise in recent months.

Karun was supported by the figure released by the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) that the January-September period saw the number of French visitors to Vietnam up 12% year-on-year to over 147,000, Australia by 27% to more than 205,000, and Japan by 18% to nearly 317,000.

Because of the rising demand, Thai Airways now uses the Airbus 330 plane with 305 seats for the flights to and from Vietnam, or nearly 60 seats more than on the carrier’s aircraft for this market months ago.

Thai Airways estimated average seat capacity for its flights to and from Vietnam at 75% and is looking to 90% or higher when it prepares to launch two-way tickets starting from US$551 for the services from Vietnam to Europe and other destinations.