The Thai government agreed yesterday to reopen Bangkok's old Don Muang airport for international and domestic flights amid growing problems at the scandal-ridden Suvarnabhumi airport.

 

"We need time to make repairs and improvements at Suvarnabhumi airport because of the many flaws," Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont told reporters after a Cabinet meeting. "Today the Cabinet has agreed to reopen Don Muang as an international airport."

 

The move, which still needs final approval, means that international flights would be divided between the two airports.

 

A government-appointed committee will submit a detailed plan for reopening Don Muang to the Cabinet in two weeks, after which Don Muang could be reopened in 45 days, said Transport Minister Thira Hao-Charoen.

 

The sleek and modern Suvarnabhumi airport opened to great fanfare in September. It was built to transform the Thai capital into Southeast Asia's leading air hub.

 

Suvarnabhumi, which means "Golden Land" in Thai, is the largest airport in Southeast Asia, with an annual capacity of 45 million passengers. Thailand had hoped it would emerge quickly as a serious regional rival to Hong Kong and Singapore.

 

But four months after its opening, the airport has been hit by graft scandals, rutted taxiways, leaking toilets and baggage handling problems.

 

The biggest problem is rutting of the asphalt taxiways that has now spread to 6 percent of the air apron, operator Airports of Thailand said last week. Previous reports in the Thai media had suggested they were cracks, not ruts.

 

Eleven gates were out of action due to engineers digging stretches of the meter-thick asphalt and concrete surface to get to the bottom of the problem, which stretches only to a depth of 10 cm and should not be hard to repair, experts said.

 

The Transport Ministry said last week it would seek Cabinet approval to reopen Don Muang for some domestic flights, to ease congestion at Suvarnabhumi so repairs could be made.

 

It was not immediately clear why the government decided that some international flights should also move to Don Muang, a move that critics have said would be confusing to tourists and could cause logistical problems of shuttling between the two airports.

 

Don Muang is located north of Bangkok and Suvarnabhumi is east of the capital.

 

(China Daily February 7, 2007)