Thai Airways Starting Bangkok To Dusseldorf Flights

I have a relative that works in Thai airways as a FA, she said that Thai has cut off a lot of FA since they are loosing so much money. In addition, I don't get the fact that why they bought in so many new aircrafts, it's just a mess of planning. I completely agree with you.

Can't see this route lasting long. Is it seasonal? Probably DUS has lower fees.

what about the other 3 days a week?

I believe Thai hopes to use DUS to tap into Dutch market as well since they are banned from flying to AMS.

Works just fine for me....Lufthansa usually has more seats open for ORD-DUS than they do on the ORD-FRA flights. So, if you're based out of ORD like me it's a positive move

@Tom: they're really banned from flying to AMS? Do you have any background on that, cannot find anything on the internet.

@JMR I don't remember where I read it from but years ago a flight attendant was trying to smuggle drugs into the country and that was resulted in the ban. Of course, this could be rumors or some conspiracy theory.

Is there an LH First Class lounge in DUS for passengers entering from the US on LH and departing on TG? If so, is the lounge anywhere near as good as the Frankfurt First Class lounge?

@ Tom - No one's going to catch a train from Amsterdam to Dusseldorf to get a flight to Bangkok. It's over 200km, which is thought of as a long distance in Northern Europe. You'd either fly KLM non-stop or, if you needed to fly *A, you'd connect in one stop on any number of carriers: LH, SQ, SK, TK, LX.

All I can think of is they're hoping that Cologne, Bonn & Dusseldorf comprise a large enough basin of point-to-point tourists that they can make some money up the back of the plane (or in discounted business -- it's a wealthy area.) But I agree with @Kelt that it just seems like they have too many damn planes.

@ Lantean -- The Frankfurt service was 6x per week, so it's a net reduction of 2x per week. I'm guessing they're just leaving a bit more slack in the overall schedule.

@ Joediver -- Agreed from a passenger perspective it's good, and there's a reason Lufthansa has more space -- it's lower yield and there's less demand. But from Thai's perspective I hardly see how that's a good thing...

@ Ed -- Just a Senator Lounge. Keep in mind Thai first class doesn't get you Lufthansa First Class Lounge access, but rather just Lufthansa Senator Lounge entrance.

From personal experience, there is very lucrative "marketing support" available from Dusseldorf airport for new longhaul flights. Also, the size of the Dusseldorf catchment area is sizeable - encompassing Dusseldorf-Dortmund-Koln-Aachen and also areas in Belgium and Netherlands for whom access to Brussels/Amsterdam is less convenient. Finally, there is a sizeable tourist market between Germany and Thailand - LTU used to be very successful on their Bangkok to Dusseldorf route. Lufthansa is not known for being very co-operative with the tour agencies so I would not be surprised if a sizeable tour contract is driving this service as well.

@Lucky To add to what Sean says, you have to remember that in Germany, rail connections play a big part at airports; Lufthansa even codeshares with DB ICE services for domestic connections. Dusseldorf is a couple of hours closer to a lot of North German, Belgian and Dutch cities than Frankfurt and still overlaps with Frankfurt. If Sean is correct then this is driven by the leisure market then less frequent flights over a wider area could work for them.

Isn't FRA-BKK one of the routes LH is removing F class on?

@ EthaninSF -- Yep, I believe so.

@Tom I got to check that out 🙂

@Josh: you're talking about the Dutch. They'll drive 200kms for a 5 euro discount 😉 (I'm Dutch, I can say that). Actually, I've taken some trips from DUS, just because it's way cheaper. I live about 40kms from AMS and I had to go to Munich. AMS-MUN: 380 euros. DUS-MUN: 115. Yep, then I'll drive a bit more. But apart from me, Dusseldorf is actually closer to the most of the east of The Netherlands with cities like Enschede (158,000), Arnhem (150,000), Nijmegen (170,000) and Venlo (100,000) that rather go to Dusseldorf than to Amsterdam. Apart from the traffic, you can drive faster in Germany and parking is cheaper @DUS. Of course, people from the more populated west of the country (Utrecht, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague) will prefer to fly from AMS, but still they can catch quite a nice market from Dusseldorf. And don't forget about the Rurhgebiet: with 5.3 million inhabitants quite an interesting market. Frankfurt is still a 2 hour drive away...

What they should do is upgrade the business class to make it more in line with the likes of SQ/CX, consider introducing better seats for one for more privacy, and then get rid of first class. That way, the royalty can travel in J too.

Can you provide a link to the official announcement from the Thai site?

I had heard about the rumored cancellation of TG922/923 and further noticed that they had zeroed out all space on the flight stating on 12/1 as of last friday. This made sense if they were in the process of cancelling the flight.

But this morning they had reopened space and started selling seats on TG923/923. There is also award seats available in Dec. and into 2015

The posts on FT are confusing to say the least, The last one quotes a TG CSA that 922/923 is back, so was looking for some official confirmation.

Strange, last night when I read this I check with Thai website and booking no longer show TG 922/923 for booking (but they are still there in the timetable). Now the booking showing TG922/923 back again.

I have a booking on TG923 around new year, so I call their call centre (Thailand) but apparently the agent there have not heard anything about this. Anyone know what is the policy regarding something like this will be for other airlines, especially if I have a connecting flight?

This is great news. Air Berlin used to fly the BKK-DUS route for years until they entered one world alliance.
Dusseldorf is easy to reach for many Dutch and Belgians. I just hope that this does not affect load factors for Thai's BKK- Brussels route, as I would hate to see them leave Brussels again...