Review of Nok Air flight Buriram → Bangkok in Economy

Intro

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.   

The actual flight

Wishing to spend more days in Buriram to explore the area, it unfortunately was already time to return to Bangkok with the latest flight as I had to return to my home the day after from Bangkok. 

We rented a rental car with a private person early in the morning and made an appointment with her to return our car at six pm (about 90 minutes prior to our flight). A few minutes ahead of six pm, we were driving on the road leading to the airport. 

While we originally booked a Mazda, the person simply forgot our order and apoligized once again for having to drive a Toyota Yaris which was the only available car she had that time. Not a big issue as it was a very enjoyable car for only 900 THB/Day (Equiv. to 26 EUR). Her husband was already waiting for us, so it took only a matter of a minute to be released.

While Buriram is a small domestic airport, it had only a very very small door for departing passengers to enter and I wonder how someone would be able to check in an animal for the flight as the building does not allow any pet inside nor the infamous Durian.

Upon enterring the airport, it was a very clean building, yet very quiet too with only two counters being open for check in, which was more than needed as there was literally no line at all. It also housed two coffee shops. Mind you that those two shops are the only shops available to get any beverages and there is no such shop past security.

The return flight was actually more expensive than it needed to be as I was dumb enough to accidentally add luggage to my ticket, which of course I did not have with me and obtained my boarding card within a minute after enterring the terminal. Me and my fiancee went to one of the coffee shops and managed to take this shot, which really displays the entire airport (except the security and baggage area).

About thirty minutes prior to our flight's departure time, we decided to pass security, which did not take more than a single minute to pass and entered the security area which housed plenty of seating, a lavatory and a shop, which was already closed when we entered (or closed for good?).

Only a few minutes later our aircraft for our flight to Bangkok Don Mueang arrived in a blueish livery.

Our aircraft for today would be HS-DQH, a 3.4 year old Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 that has solely been in service to Nok Air and is named Nok Kong Kwan. I do think this blueish livery looked much better than the one we had on our first flight.

Boarding was called on time and was only a walk for a minute to our aircraft. While the Bombardier looks neat and is much faster, I'd still prefer to fly on an ATR in terms of comfort.

While my fiancee occupied the window seat (yes, she has some sort of avgeek fever like me too), I sat down on 41B, which was an aisle seat and took a shot of the nice looking cabin, which showed little signs of wear.

Even though the aircraft was fully booked, the boarding process went extremely fast and soon after the engines were firing up already for our departure to Bangkok. Many of the passengers we recognized from our earlier flight to Buriram were on board of this flight too. After a quick safety instructions given by the flight attendant (which was performed twice again), we were rolling for take off fifteen minutes ahead of our schedule. This early departure would eventually backfire us at the end, but more on that later.

All literature given to us was exactly the same on board of our flight as my previous report. The service went exactly the same too as we received a complimentary bottle of water (with the same decorations) and if someone fancied to buy some food/goods, we simply had to ring the bell above our heads to call for a flight attendant.

While legroom was still limited for me, it felt like it was a bit more spacious in the front cabin rather than the aft. 

Pilots checked in with us twenty-five minutes into flight informing us that we were already in approach to Bangkok Don Meaung with the actual weather, thanked us for choosing Nok Air and expected us to land on Runway 21R, which would require only a short taxi route to our stand. It also gave us a beautiful view over Krung Thep at night.

Touchdown was at thirty minutes ahead of schedule, which is a massive winning for a flight that takes generally just an hour and you could see the fuselage of an Bangkok Air ATR 72-500 (HS-PGA), which I flew on a year ago from Mandalay to Chiang Mai and wrote a review about too in the following link below. Unfortunately I think PG has finally retired this bird as it was one of the last remaining -500s in their fleet.

While we arrived like thirty minutes ahead of schedule, this arrival eventually backfired us as Nok Air didn't anticipate our early arrival and did not arrange us any transport that early. It took over twenty minutes for a bus to appear and the cabin was extremely hot as there was no airconditioning available at all (due to the engines being shut)… The flight attendant did her best job to apologize and tried multiple times with the flight crew and ground crew to coordinate for a bus to arrive as quickly as possible. 

After a long wait, the bus finally arrived and we were allowed to disembark our aircraft, which was in an excellent state. Managed to grab a few more shots of our bird and the bus ride back to our terminal did not take more than a few minutes. We eventually grabbed some dinner in the food court before heading to our hotel by taxi, which costed us about 300 THB as our taxi driver was not familiar with the area we stayed in and he simply followed the bts line to our place. We didn't mind as it was a very lovely driver and clearly had no intentions to screw us over like some taximeters like to do.