ENGLISH DEYEA NEWS

by Solomon | New Delhi (Mizzima) - International airlines in Rangoon will resume flights to Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi International Airport on Friday, after more than a week of suspending flights to the Thai capital.

Officials for three prominent international airlines in Rangoon - Myanmar Airways International (MAI), Thai Airways International and Bangkok Airways – say they have all scheduled flights to resume to Bangkok on Friday.

"Our flight to Bangkok International Airport will restart tomorrow [Friday]," an official at the MAI office said. "Tickets have been sold for tomorrow."

Flights from Rangoon to Bangkok came to a sudden halt following the night of November 25, when members of Thailand's anti-government People's Alliance for Democracy party seized the Thai capital's Suvarnabhumi International and Don Muang airports.

While flights to Suvarnabhumi had to be suspended, MAI did conduct some flights to Thailand on November 27 via U-Tapao Airport, about 120 miles southeast of Bangkok.

However, MAI, which regularly has one flight a day to Bangkok five days a week, was forced to switch to flying a Fokker aircraft, as opposed to the usual airbus, for the route, an official said.

"We stopped our flights only on November 26, but MAI flights continued to Thailand by using Fokker airplanes and landing at U-Tapao Airport," the official added.

The Thai flag carrier, Thai Airways International, which had suspended flights between Rangoon and Bangkok since protestors seized the airports, said it is likely to resume flights on Friday. But an official at the Rangoon office cautioned it is still unclear how certain the schedules are.

"We will not resume until tomorrow [Friday] morning but flights might also be scheduled for the evening," said the official, adding, "We still are not sure of the exact flight schedules."

The official said Thai Airways had suspended all flights to Bangkok since November 26, though it had made trips between Rangoon and Bangkok on Saturday and Sunday using U-Tapao Airport.

Thai Airways maintains two flights, seven days a week, to Bangkok from Rangoon, the official elaborated.

Similarly, Bangkok Airways, since Wednesday of this week, has also conducted flights to U-Tapao and will recommence flying to Suvarnabhumi come Friday.

"We could start flying December 3, by landing at U-Tapao, but from tomorrow [Friday] onward we will be able to again land at the International Airport," commented an official at the Rangoon office of Bangkok Airways.

Travelers, tourists and airlines in Southeast Asia suffered a sudden economic stroke when anti-government protestors seized Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi and Don Muang Airports. According to reports, some 300,000 travelers were left stranded in the Kingdom. Thailand, according to reports, also incurred a financial loss of about three billion baht per day over the course of the closures.

Suvarnabhumi, the fourth largest airport in Southeast Asia, caters to an estimated more than 100,000 travelers and tourists per day. While many of the traveler's destinations are within the Kingdom itself, many also use the airport as a transit point.

Protestors in Thailand on Thursday announced that they will evacuate the airports after Thailand's constitutional court on Tuesday dissolved Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat and his Peoples' Power Party, along with two other parties that had joined to form the coalition government, of electoral fraud

According to the constitution, written by the military government last year, the Prime Minister and 20 members of his cabinet are now barred from politics for five years.