THAI upgrades channel business

Thai Airways International says it will use its 50th anniversary celebrations to extend its reach through website and mobile phone communications.

THAI will kick off mobile services, via mthaiairways.com. Customers will be able check-in, find information and flight status using their mobile phones. Check-in via mobile phone will be identical to check-in via a computer.

On the website, the airline will reduce booking steps from seven clicks to four clicks to complete a booking in a more user-friendly manner. It has also started to display lower fares on the website to attract traffic.

On the code-share front, the airline has already announced it will resume services to Johannesburg, South Africa, 16 May, just days after it celebrates 50 years of flying. The service will extend to other destinations in Africa through a code-share partnership with South African Airways, its Star Alliance partner.

“We will add Argentina, Brazil and Chile in our network by October through code share agreements with SAA, but first we will cooperate on intra-African routes such as to Botswana,” THAI executive vice president, commercial, Pruet Boobphakam told TTR Weekly.

Also, THAI wishes to extend the Johannesburg service to Cape Town, but the plan has not been approved by the South African government.

“The government allows us to fly to Cape Town, but we cannot pick up passengers on the domestic sector. We are seeking approval to be able to pick up transit passengers to allow them to extend their trip to Cape Town before returning to Bangkok,” Mr Pruet explained.

Star partner, All Nippon Airways, has already signed agreements to work with THAI to establish Tokyo as the preferred North American hub for Southeast Asian travellers.

Code-share agreements are being established with ANA to US cities and THAI intends to partner with Air Canada, another Star member, to expand services to Toronto and Vancouver.

“We will able to offer a service to Hawaii, hopefully by April if the agreements are cleared in time.”

Mr Pruet confirmed THAI wants to code share with Turkish Airlines.

“Sydney-Istanbul, Auckland-Istanbul are in the pipeline. I don’t see why we cannot sell these routes. We have to grow our existing code share agreements and actively promote new code-share routes such as Cairo and Kiev.”