Thai Airways shall be updating the interiors of its slim physique jets, which ought to give the airline much more flexibility with fleet planning.
Thai Airways updating former Thai Smile Airbus A320s
As I’ve already written about, Thai Airways has eradicated its low price subsidiary, Thai Smile, as of early 2024. Particularly, Thai Smile has been merged into Thai Airways’ mainline operations, as clearly the fee financial savings of working an extremely low price provider didn’t outweigh the downsides.
Whereas Thai Airways won’t all the time supply the identical low fares that Thai Smile provided, that is in any other case nice information, because it creates a extra seamless expertise.
The catch is that the passenger expertise on the previous Thai Smile planes doesn’t actually match what you’ll discover within the mainline Thai Airways fleet. These plane are outfitted with 168-174 seats, and simply function premium financial system and financial system, with premium financial system consisting of financial system seats with blocked middles.
Thai Airways has now revealed plans to alter this. As of This autumn 2024, Thai Airways intends to reconfigure all of its A320s with new, standardized cabins:
- Thai Airways A320s shall be reconfigured to function 156 seats, together with 12 enterprise class seats and 144 financial system class seats
- Enterprise class seats shall be in a 2-2 configuration, that includes additional seat width and pitch, akin to what you would possibly discover in home top quality inside the USA
- Thai Airways will even set up Wi-Fi on its A320s
At this hyperlink you’ll be able to see photos of what the brand new cabins will appear to be.
It will give Thai Airways much more flexibility
Not solely is it nice to see plans to replace these planes from a passenger expertise standpoint, however this will even permit Thai Airways to higher optimize its fleet planning. Thai Airways now has a fleet of 20 Airbus A320s, all from Thai Smile.
When Thai Smile was nonetheless in operation, Thai Airways solely had large physique plane in its mainline fleet. As soon as these planes have extra premium interiors, Thai Airways will be capable of fly these plane to all types of locations, together with premium ones, the place it’s vital for the airline to have excessive frequencies.
So fleet planning selections will not be made primarily based on whether or not a market is premium or not, however slightly shall be primarily based on flying an plane that matches the demand for a market. I’d say that’s a win-win for each the airline and customers.
Backside line
As of late 2024, Thai Airways will reconfigure its fleet of Airbus A320s. The airline will add all new interiors, together with a correct enterprise class cabin, plus Wi-Fi. These are all planes that beforehand flew for low price subsidiary Thai Smile. Now that they’re within the mainline fleet, it is smart for Thai Airways to replace them, so the airline can supply an expertise extra consistent with what individuals would count on.
With new interiors, I count on we’ll additionally see an enlargement to the sorts of routes these planes fly.
What’s your tackle Thai Airways’ plans to replace A320s?
