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Bangkok Airways hops to Hanoi

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CHIANG MAI, 27 March 2018:  Bangkok Airways launched its inaugural flight between Chiang Mai and Hanoi at the weekend.

The 70-seat, twin-propeller ATR72 departed Chiang Mai at 0955 and arrived in Noi Bai airport Hanoi at 1200.

The flight was reserved for VIPs and executives with 40 seats allocated to travel agents and media.

Bangkok Airways executives: Poonsuk Teerawanichphol – vice president – management Accounting (2nd from left); Chanthip Thongkanya, vice president – Office of President of Bangkok Airways (3rd from left); Varong Israsena Na Ayudhya, vice president – sales (5th from left); Peter Wiesner, advisor – network management (4th from right).

Bangkok Airways serves the route daily using its smallest aircraft possibly to gauge demand and grow the market before upgrading to the more comfortable and roomy Airbus A320.

Flight time on the ATR is two hours and five minutes to cover the 765 km air distance. An A320 would complete the trip in around one hour and 15 minutes.

Success will depend largely on support from Chiang Mai’s travel agents already selling Bangkok Airways’ ticket stock, a handful of tour operators who curate outbound travel itineraries for Thais resident in the northern city and business travel.

But there is demand for Chiang Mai holidays sold in the Hanoi where Vietnamese cashed up as the economy improves consider travel to neighbouring Thailand.

For the time being there are no competitors to fly you faster so Bangkok Airways’ THB 7,669 roundtrip fare for an early April booking is as good as it gets on the Chiang Mai-Hanoi route.

You could go one way on Bangkok Airways and return on Thai AirAsia, but there are no compelling reasons to do that other than you could hop off in Bangkok for shopping before heading back to Chiang Mai. The roundtrip fare, direct to Hanoi on the outward leg courtesy of PG and back with FD via Bangkok would set you back THB 10,325.

 

Hanoi is the third destination in Vietnam after the airline launched services to Danang in central Vietnam, May 2016 and to Phu Quoc an island off the southern Vietnamese coast in October 2017.

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