Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Airlines reduce flights to Cambodia as off season comes

PHNOM PENH, June 4 (Xinhua) -- Airlines are beginning their annual reduction of flights into Cambodia as the off season of tourism has started, the Cambodian Daily reported Wednesday.

As of June 1, Bangkok Airways has temporarily canceled its twice-weekly flights from Chiang Mai, Thailand, to Siem Reap, Cambodia, which will not reopen until October.

Meanwhile, the airline will remain its five-to-six daily flights from Bangkok to Siem Reap, the English-Khmer language newspaper quoted company source as saying.

Last month, Vietnam Airlines canceled 110 flights into Siem Reap, which is the hottest sight-seeing spot of Cambodia.

Also in May, Eva Air cut off 13 flights into Cambodia.

Every year, airlines scale back flights to Cambodia when the rainy season begins and tourism slows, the paper quoted airport official as saying.

Tourism is one of the kingdom's foremost pillar industries. In 2007, it received some 2 million foreign tourist arrivals.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Poor airline, they have to suffer a double-blow on high fuel price and low fare rate. I hope they will get some for government assistance for it.

Anonymous said...

you know, cambodia needs to expand our airports as they are now really small and can't even let long-haul flights landed safely. by international standard, cambodian airfields in our major cities like phnom penh, siem reap, sihanoukville, etc. needs to have at least 3600 meter runway or longer; otherwise, airfield is small and can't accommodate jumpo jets like the 747s double deck or longer haul fligts from the USA or europe or any where else for that matter. cambodia needs to expand the airports runway to at least 3600 meters or longer in order to receive more tourists, etc... god bless.

Anonymous said...

Agreed, I am sure they are working on it as we speak. The key is to do the job without interrupting the progress, and how you are going to go about it?

My approach will be just to build a new and bigger airport instead of trying to expand the old one.