Phuketwan News Analysis
A PRIVATE airline from Burma is planning flights to Phuket beginning this year, sources within the airline have told the China news agency, Xinhua.
The airline, Air Bagan, plans to add more services to Cambodia, Thailand and China in 2010, with a service between Yangon and Chiang Mai opening last Thursday.
Chiang Mai and Kuala Lumpur are now the airline's two international destinations, the news agency says. Phuket and Siem Reap, the destination closest to Cambodia's Angkor Wat, are next on the wish-list, with China's Kumming and Guagzhou.
Air Bagan, which flies to 20 destinations inside Burma, has yet to cement its reputation internationally.
The airline's first international scheduled service to Bangkok began on May 15, 2007 and the second, to Singapore on September 7 the same year.
Both of the flight services were suspended in 2008.
Phuketwan suspects that the savage repression of the Saffron Revolution in September 2007, in which monks who protested against the harsh policies of the junta were beaten up or tortured, may have had something to do with that retreat.
Burma is, quite rightly, one of the world's pariah states. It could switch to being a tourist magnet, but not under the rule of the generals.
The ruling junta has set 2010 as an election year and is beginning to urge the people of Burma to use their vote wisely - in other words, vote for us, or else.
Meanwhile, Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the last democratic election in Buma, remains under house arrest as the generals play their regular game of pretending to become more open, without really making concessions.
They all grow rich, of course, on the profits from a country that has enormous natural resources, and for that reason easily win friends in high places in neighboring countries such as Thailand, India and China.
There would certainly be many people who would be keen to fly to Burma, direct from Phuket.
Once Burma has a democratically elected government and the generals are just a bad memory, Phuketwan will be among the first in the queue.
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