PHUKET: Airports of Thailand's board met on Phuket yesterday - but Phuket people could be forgiven for asking why they bothered.

While admitting that AoT had some way to go to meet international standards (you can say that again), the board spent most of the meeting with Transport Minister Jarupong Rungsuwan telling him about plans for Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport.

Yes, they came to Phuket . . . to talk about Suvarnabhumi.

The plan is for Bangkok's international air hub to expand from 20,000 rai to 50,000 rai and to include a shopping centre and an F1 racing track.

Great, for those who are delayed long enough trying to get out of the airport. They can go to the motor races.

But what about Phuket, its chronic overload problems, and the need for a strategy to expand tourism to Phuket and the Andaman region beyond 2015?

From the top at AoT yesterday, not so much as a peep.

Phuket International Airport's enlargement will be ready - barring more delays of the kind that have come often so far - by mid-2015.

But by then, observers predict, if Phuket's growth continues on its present trajectory, passenger numbers will exceed the new airport's 12.5 million capacity.

What next? A new airport in Phang Nga? A fast-rail link to an expanded Krabi International Airport?

There was not a hint as to what the strategy might be from the AoT board - and with Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and her Cabinet due to visit Phuket on March 19-20, that was not a good sign.

Most of the Phuket media covering yesterday's gathering at Phuket International Airport went away muttering that the whole show seemed to be another demonstration of AoT being out of touch with reality and lacking the ability to see anything beyond Bangkok.

Why did they bother? We may never know.

It was certainly a window of opportunity to explain the future of Phuket's most important piece of infrastructure, and what the plan is for Andaman tourism to stay ahead of regional rivals Bali and Lombok.

Indonesian officials appear to grasp the importance of airports to international tourism - and to see beyond Jakarta.

Thailand's AoT yesterday demonstrated a total lack of vision.

Our advice to resort managers and would-be investors in resorts on Phuket and along the Andaman coast: be alarmed, be very alarmed.

The board of AoT met on Phuket yesterday, saw a window of opportunity, and defenestrated. Around the airport, extra-long queues were probably forming at Immigration as usual.

Transport Minister Jarupong will today look at some of the controversial options for solving Phuket's road transport infrastructure issues, a far less pressing matter than sorting out Phuket's future in the air.