Thai Airways will be updating the interiors of its narrow body jets, which should give the airline a lot more flexibility with fleet planning.
In this post:
Thai Airways updating former Thai Smile Airbus A320s
As I’ve already written about, Thai Airways has eliminated its low cost subsidiary, Thai Smile, as of early 2024. Specifically, Thai Smile has been merged into Thai Airways’ mainline operations, as clearly the cost savings of running an ultra low cost carrier didn’t outweigh the downsides.
While Thai Airways might not always offer the same low fares that Thai Smile offered, this is otherwise great news, as it creates a more seamless experience.
The catch is that the passenger experience on the former Thai Smile planes doesn’t really match what you’ll find in the mainline Thai Airways fleet. These aircraft are equipped with 168-174 seats, and just feature premium economy and economy, with premium economy consisting of economy seats with blocked middles.
Thai Airways has now revealed plans to change this. As of Q4 2024, Thai Airways intends to reconfigure all of its A320s with new, standardized cabins:
- Thai Airways A320s will be reconfigured to feature 156 seats, including 12 business class seats and 144 economy class seats
- Business class seats will be in a 2-2 configuration, featuring extra seat width and pitch, comparable to what you might find in domestic first class within the United States
- Thai Airways will also install Wi-Fi on its A320s
At this link you can see pictures of what the new cabins will look like.
This will give Thai Airways a lot more flexibility
Not only is it great to see plans to update these planes from a passenger experience standpoint, but this will also allow Thai Airways to better optimize its fleet planning. Thai Airways now has a fleet of 20 Airbus A320s, all from Thai Smile.
When Thai Smile was still in operation, Thai Airways only had wide body aircraft in its mainline fleet. Once these planes have more premium interiors, Thai Airways will be able to fly these aircraft to all kinds of destinations, including premium ones, where it’s important for the airline to have high frequencies.
So fleet planning decisions will no longer be made based on whether a market is premium or not, but rather will be based on flying an aircraft that matches the demand for a market. I’d say that’s a win-win for both the airline and consumers.
Bottom line
As of late 2024, Thai Airways will reconfigure its fleet of Airbus A320s. The airline will add all new interiors, including a proper business class cabin, plus Wi-Fi. These are all planes that previously flew for low cost subsidiary Thai Smile. Now that they’re in the mainline fleet, it makes sense for Thai Airways to update them, so the airline can offer an experience more in line with what people would expect.
With new interiors, I expect we’ll also see an expansion to the types of routes these planes fly.
What’s your take on Thai Airways’ plans to update A320s?
Took a flight to CNX yesterday in TG Premium Eco / Biz. The food was poor and the service was poor, too. Almost no awareness of the cabin crew to separate both classes. Eco passengers were allowed to use the front lavatory and Eco passengers were also the first ones who got off the plane as no one told them to wait and let the premium cabin get off first.
Considering that I paid...
Took a flight to CNX yesterday in TG Premium Eco / Biz. The food was poor and the service was poor, too. Almost no awareness of the cabin crew to separate both classes. Eco passengers were allowed to use the front lavatory and Eco passengers were also the first ones who got off the plane as no one told them to wait and let the premium cabin get off first.
Considering that I paid I significant premium over the Eco fare it the experience was disappointing. I will book Eco until the new cabins are introduced and can recommend to do the same, esp. as *G
I was a but surprised to see one of the pilots using the lavatory mid flight with out having cabin crew entering the cockpit as second person. I thought this is international standard after the Germanwings crash a few years ago?!?!!
Expensive airfares after merged with Thai Smile. Inflight meal quality also decline on both business & economy classes, disappointed.
Seems like they won't be adding personal IFE screens. Also, the seats look quite basic to be launched in 2024 (a silly complaint, even to me)... I hope Thai would add IFE screens and maybe a better business class seats (e.g. Collins Diamond) to their A21Ns that will be joining their fleet in 2025.
These A320s are used on flights that are roughly an hour to an hour and a half, max, domestically, so I suspect offering wifi access to connect to an IFE service will make more sense to them than installing in-seat IFE systems on these planes. I suspect the A321Ns will be used on some of these routes, but more so to destinations like SIN, DPS, MNL, SGN, HAN, their many India routes, HKG, and KUL,...
These A320s are used on flights that are roughly an hour to an hour and a half, max, domestically, so I suspect offering wifi access to connect to an IFE service will make more sense to them than installing in-seat IFE systems on these planes. I suspect the A321Ns will be used on some of these routes, but more so to destinations like SIN, DPS, MNL, SGN, HAN, their many India routes, HKG, and KUL, and will be snazzier.
FWIW, the current "economy plus" seating - while basically extra legroom economy - are perfectly fine for these short domestic flights...by the time service begins and ends, you're on landing approach. Currently, these fares come with full catering (a meal and beverages, minus alcohol), lounge access, and priority boarding, bags, and check-in. If you travel enough within Thailand, you learn quickly that the priority stuff is VERY valuable when navigating Thai airports where there are hourly (and sometimes half hourly) departures on multiple airlines to the same destinations (this is especially the case at BKK, HKT, and CNX, where Thai competes with AirAsia, Bangkok Airways, and Thai VietJet). No complaints on newer seats, but if Thai doesn't use their A320s for flights beyond Thailand, the "plus" is still going to be all about the extras.
They also fly this plane to KTM, which is blocked at about 3.5 hour. For the fares they charge, Silk Class is laughably bad.
@KATA indeed - I wouldn't fly this for 3.5 hours...let's hope they put their 321N on it.
Passengers can also expect frequent flyer benefits once again, like extra luggage, lounge access, priority checkin and security.