Airports of Thailand revised its recently rosier forecast for air travel, reducing its number of expected passengers by a third following the latest coronavirus outbreak.
The operator of Thailand’s major international gateways said it doesn’t expect air travel to return to 2019 levels until 2024.
AOT estimated there will be 335,459 flights in 2021, down 25 percent from its previous estimate in November and 62.6 percent less than 2019. Moreover, there will be 31.9 million overall passengers, 33.4 percent down from the previous estimate and 77.5 percent below 2019.
In the 2022 fiscal year, which begins in October, AOT predicted 547,226 flights and 73.2 million passengers and, in 2023, 824,915 flights and 128.9 million passengers. In 2024, the authority sees 923,925 flights and 146.4 million passengers, finally recovering from five years of pandemic effects.
AOT warned, however, that the forecasts are based on the expectation that Thailand will remove all conditions to entry, including quarantine, by December.
Domestic travel also has been revised downward from November. Passengers at the six AOT airports fell from 127,000 a day in November to just 15,000 a day in January.
