Some 2K travellers still stuck in Bangkok

bangkok — About 2,000 travellers were still stranded in the Thai capital Bangkok on Friday and it will take a few more days to get them home after flights were disrupted by the latest conflict between Pakistan and India, airline officials said.

Thai Airways International cancelled more than a dozen flights to European cities — including London, Paris, Milan, Zurich and Frankfurt — after Pakistan closed its airspace on Wednesday amid rising tensions with India.

“There are still about 2,000 passengers,” Thai Airways President Sumeth Damrongchaitham told reporters at a briefing to announce the company’s financial results. The backlog would be cleared over the next two or three days, he said.

Nearly 5,000 passengers — most of them flying on Thai Airways and Taiwan’s EVA Airways — scrambled to find alternative flights from Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport after Pakistan closed its airspace on Wednesday.

Thailand is among the world’s most popular tourist destinations, drawing more than 38 million visitors last year, about 6.8 million of them from Europe.

Rival carriers like Singapore Airlines re-routed their European flights to avoid the affected airspace, but Thai Airways did not have routes over Iranian or Turkish airspace, Sumeth said.

Thailand’s national carrier eventually gained permission from China to use its airspace and resumed flights to Europe on Thursday evening.