Airline company Thai Smile Air will be offering direct daily flights from Mactan, Cebu to Bangkok starting this October.
Thai Smile Air, a wholly owned subsidiary of Thai Airways, will offer the daily services thrice in the morning and four times in the afternoon per week. The new route is in addition to the company’s five international and twelve domestic routes in Thailand.
Thai Smiles executive Wutcharin Thatan said that the airlines expects a good amount of traffic since Bangkok is a popular destination for business and leisure travels for the Filipinos. He said that the added route will be beneficial for travelers from the Central and Southern Philippines compared to the previous option of flying to Manila for their flight to Bangkok.
The biggest aviation event in the region, Routes Asia, where airlines, airports, and tourism airports converge to discuss aviation opportunities, spurred the ideation of the route as the event was hosted in the Philippines. Erwin Balane, head of the Department of Tourism (DOT) Route Development team, said that the added route will bring an additional 58,968 international seats every year to Cebu.
Mactan-Cebu International Airport is the second busiest airport in the Philippines and is expected to open a new terminal in 2018.
