25 reviews
While it was almost time for me to depart back to home, I decided a day in advance to this trip to book myself a day trip with my fiancee to Buriram to fly to there in morning and return to Bangkok by night to visit the city itself and one of their historical parks which features who temples who're dated from the time Buriram was part of the Hindu-Khmer reign. The photos of those temples, which are Prasat Hin Phanom Rung & Prasat Mueang Tam I will add as a tourist bonus to this report. It also gave me an opportunity to fly Nok Air's dash 8s after many failed tries as some trips I was forced to cancel due to bad weather in that area or equipment being changed at the last minutes by the airline.
Check my routing for this trip below.
After an early wake up call by our alarms at approximately 3 am, we decided to grab a taximeter from Silom to Bangkok Don Mueang at around 4 am. The ride only took us 25 minutes from downtown Bangkok and costed us about 200THB (Equivalent to 6 euros) which dropped us off in front of the domestic terminal.
We made our way to one of the check in counters for Nok Air, which took a total of five minutes to obtain our boarding card. While I had my boarding card on my phone already and no luggage to drop off, I still obtained a real boarding card as my fiancee loves to collect them and uses them in her diary. We were kindly greeted by one of Nok Air's ground staff who pointed us in the direction to go and did really an outstanding job to feel us welcomed.
Security was busier than I expected for such an early departure and took a total of ten minutes to clear, which was still good in terms of the amount of passengers that were waiting in lines.
Peeked out of the window at one of the first windows for me and instantly noticed an odd bird sitting between the usual planes….. Transavia Thailand, is it a thing? Obviously not, but it is leased by Transavia France to Nok Air for a period of time.
Grabbed a coffee at the Coffee Club near one of the windows, which gives you a good view over one of their aprons and this Boeing 737-900ER of Thai Lionair was prepping itself for a flight to Chiang Mai as SL 1522.
By the time I paid our bill, Nok Air was almost done boarding their fully loaded bus and we were one of the last to join, which by that time was already completely full, yet staff was trying to add more passengers to it to prevent another bus from having to perform another ride for a few passengers.
And finally after trying for a while, I really managed to finally fly one of their dashes…. Luckily I didn't book the later flight as they changed the equipment again for that specific flight into a Boeing 737-800. Our flight would be performed by HS-DQA, a 5.4 year old Bombardier Dash 8-Q400, who has solely been in service to Nok Air and is named Nok Anna.
That smile looks creepy from this angle though.
While I'm 1.83m, the legroom was definitely a bit on the limited side for me, yet not really a huge hassle for a hour flight. The seats itself were pretty basic, clean yet comfy.
It also comes with a light and a personal airvent.
While the doors were immediately closed after the last passenger entered the aircraft, a push back was engaged immediately (felt like they were rushing to meet an airport slot), while many passengers were still busy putting their bags in the overhead panel with cabin crew supporting them… I absolutely love the sound of these turboprops firing up.
Shortly after we were already taxiing to one of the active runways for our departure to Buriram, while flight attendants were given us their safety instructions twice. One for the forward compartment and one for the aft. The instructions were only done by one flight attendant, while the other one was speaking over the intercom.
Four minutes past our departure time we were already airborne. To my surprise, we did use 21R for take off today instead of the usual 21L.
A beautiful view over Bangkok.
Sunrise was soon to appear.
A quick look at the literature located in the seat pocked, which contained of Nok Air's magazine JibJib, a sickback, a safety card and Nok Air's inflight shopping magazine.
A more detailed look at their inflight shop magazine which displayed prices in Thai Bath, US Dollar, Chinese Yuan and Japanese Yen and is decently priced accordingly I'd think.
The thing I appreciate most with Nok Air is that for a LCC carrier, which it is, it still provides you with a beautiful decorated water bottle free of charge for anyone who'd like to have it. A small impression in the photo below of what it looks like.
Sunrise was at it's finest right now. Cabin crew did not come out for their BoB service, yet announced via intercom to order it with one of the flight attendants if you wanted to buy something to eat or to buy a good.
A small impression of the cabin.
and before we knew it we were already in approach to Buriram airport with a quick update from the flight deck about the weather at our destination and thanked us for flying with Nok Air. It's not really common in Thailand on domestic flights to hear anything from the flight deck, so this unexpected announcement was much appreciated.
As Buriram is a very small airport, it is pretty clear that we were the sole aircraft on the apron for a solid fifteen minutes until an A320 of Thai AirAsia arrived.
We parked close to the terminal and it required us to make a short walk over to the terminal.
And saying our byes to the aircraft that brought us over to Buriram from Bangkok. The actual aircraft is screeming for a wash I noticed.
The welcoming sign of Buriram Airport the moment you are entering the terminal.
And by the time I took this photo (like five minutes after we deplaned), the luggage was already picked up by everyone and the baggage clain sign was already changed to the flight of Thai AirAsia, which arrived 15 minutes later than our flight from Don Mueang Int'l Airport.
A tourist bonus below as promised.
I finally managed to fly Nok Air their dashes after many failed tries, I found the cabin crew to be very pleasant on this flight, even though legroom was limited. Ground staff at DMK was friendly too, though trying to push us all in one bus to ship us to our aircraft was a bit too much in my perspective.
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