This month, the eagerly awaited Betong Airport will commence operations in Yala province, opening a new entry point to Thailand’s southernmost region. Following the safe arrival of the first charter flight at the end of January, the airport is now ready to welcome a steady influx of international travellers from February onwards.
“This is the first flight since the airport received clearance to welcome charter flights,” confirmed an aide to Thailand’s Prime Minister – one of 78 passengers onboard Nok Air flight DD 6260, which became the first plane to touch down at the airport on 30 January. “It is expected that Betong airport will fully open to serve the community and tourists in February,” he added.
The airport, which cost an estimated 1.9 billion baht (US$53 million), was originally scheduled to open in 2019, but was delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Thailand’s Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) initially purchased over 1.4 million sqm of land to develop the new site in 2016. Construction began in December 2017 and has now been officially completed.
The finished airport features a 1,800-metre runway, a terminal building and a range of airside facilities. The state-of-the-art passenger terminal, covering 7,000 square metres, has the capacity to serve 300 passengers an hour – around 1 million arrivals every year. With Thailand reopening and Covid under control, the new airport represents a fresh start for the tourism sector, and a bellwether of better times ahead.
Strategically located at the very southern edge of Thailand, where the Kingdom’s borders bend into Malaysia, the airport will open up destinations all over the deep south of Thailand; an area that was notoriously hard to access due to high mountain ranges and limited transport links.
Close proximity to Malaysia also opens up the possibility of collaboration with Thailand’s neighbour, offering reciprocal travel lanes and multi-destination trips for returning inbound travellers. Indeed, the opening has been timed to coincide with the reopening of Malaysia’s borders to international travel. To date, commercial airlines have requested to operate two flight routes to Betong, connecting the airport to nearby Hat Yai and Bangkok’s Don Mueang.
Betong is the southernmost town in Thailand. Its location on the border with the Malaysian state of Perak makes it a popular destination with tourists – in 2014, a total of 466,913 foreigners visited Betong, generating 2.1 million baht in revenue. The number of arrivals rose to 700,000 in 2016 and is soon expected to surpass 1 million.
