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Phuket Stays Hot as Passenger Numbers Creep Higher

Wednesday, October 3, 2012
PHUKET: Work is finally expected to start next week on the expansion of Phuket International Airport, a project that was first announced four years ago.

This is akin to sitting in a plane on the tarmac for six hours before your one-hour hop from Phuket to Langkawi.

Fortunately, tourists are not waiting for the new internatioal terminal to arrive in 2015 (or 2016) before taking a holiday on Phuket.

Statistics for September - usually one of the slowest months - show a 14.63 percent rise in the number of international passengers using the airport.

However, domestic travel stagnated so the combined number of international and domestic travellers rose by a mere 6.80 percent.

Still, that's nothing to sneeze at.

Perhaps what it indicates, though, is just how international Phuket is becoming, with overseas travellers regularly outnumbering those on internal flights.

A total of 633,917 arrivals and departures occurred in September, taking the tally for the year so far to 6,966,881.

It's worth remembering that the ancient Phuket facility was built for a maximum of 6.5 million passengers. This year Phuket's crumbling terminal is on track to handle 9.3 million.

International flights rose 11.52 percent in September with the total for all flights reaching 4,559.

Comments

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"This is akin to sitting in a plane on the tarmac for six hours before your one-hour hop from Phuket to Langkawi." this is NOT akin to the airport expansion at all, except mayby in your head only.

Posted by dbate_me on October 4, 2012 08:33

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For anyone who wants to know, Emirates are starting a daily flight to/from Phuket direct from Dubai in mid December. Cuts out the need to go through Bangkok.

Posted by Logic on October 4, 2012 14:03

Editor Comment:

We can confirm that, Logic. Great news.


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