Review of Thai Airways flight Bangalore → Bangkok in Economy

As they say: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Which brings us to Thai Airways’ penchant for repeatedly short-changing — a.k.a. ‘TGing’ — A350 and 787 flights, and swapping them for this ugly old beast called a 777-200ER… as I got to learn the hard way, for the second time. 

Note: There are only 66 pictures in this report (including the Travelling Bonus), a coincidence as Thailand’s dialling code happens to be +66! In the next instalment — Gulf Air’s 787-9 GF166 (another 66!) from Bangkok to Singapore — I’ll be sharing a photo essay of the malls I visited in Bangkok that day on the hours-long layover.

Rant: The 777-200ER refuses to die at Thai Airways, like a cockroach

That cover mural is perhaps the only beautiful thing about this aircraft… WHEN will Thai Airways retire its 777-200ERs and stop short-changing passengers like me??? All the more so because it keeps taking delivery of A350s and has ordered a raft of 787s, and has retired all other old aircraft, and is even retrofitting its ex-Thai Smile A320s with a proper business class and Wi-Fi… but it will neither refit nor retire this ugly beast. I think the 777-200ER is the cockroach of the Thai Airways fleet: as ugly and horrible as it is resilient and everlasting. For all the orders of 787s and bringing in more A350s — and even A330-300s (which TG operated much more in the past, but has only three now) — the 777-200ER is an aircraft that refuses to be either retired or retrofitted. On top of which the Thai Smile brand — one of only two ‘Star Alliance Connecting Partners’ — has been discontinued and its all-A320ceo fleet has moved to TG, with some A321neos (very rare in Thailand, unlike India and Vietnam) on order. But there is not a mention of the 777-200ER’s retirement — or refurbishment — in the airline’s fleet plans.

Dear Thai Airways, your violet livery and colour scheme is the best in the world. You have so much going for you, and yet you disappointed me like this. TWICE. (You did it once in June 2022, a month where I flew three of your lovely A350s, but this awful thing — your oldest plane — was my only HS-registered aircraft in 2023.) I should’ve gone into the malls of Bangkok on my day-long stopover happy and carefree, awaiting the Gulf Air 787-9 to Singapore, and I did squeeze out the most of the day in the chaotic Asian metropolis, but… you f**ked up this leg so, so bad. I’m afraid I might not fly you again until you stop this habit of ‘TGing’ every third or fourth A350 flight — particularly to Bengaluru and Singapore — to the 777-200ER. Anyway, I have to get on with this… this flight that turned me into a masochist who loves inflicting pain on myself. Sigh.

In the conclusion of my previous report on this aircraft type, I’d written: Thai Airways’ 777-200ERs are truly ruining its smooth-as-silk reputation, and much as TG doesn’t have a choice in returning grounded aircraft to service to meet increasing demand, these aircraft should have joined their non-ER 777 brethren on the taxiways of Suvarnabhumi Airport — never to fly again — instead of continuing to disappoint passengers all over Southeast Asia with their horribly outdated product.

Only to be emphatically, resoundingly proved wrong a year and a half later.

45 787s, more A350s, even A330-300s… and yet TG KEEPS THE 777-200ER ALIVE!!!

Both SriLankan Airlines, which I flew at the beginning of this week-long Diwali holiday in November 2023, and Thai Airways are known for having many types of aircraft with small numbers of each. (This despite SriLankan having only a bit more than 20 aircraft in all — Oneworld’s smallest full member — and having only Airbus aircraft, with the A330 being its only widebody type.) However, TG has become infamous for its terrible fleet mismanagement, ordering only two 787-9s and six 787-8s, and a bunch of fuel-thirsty A340s and 747s and superjumbo A380s — all  those quadjets are retired now — while practising a terrible game of swapping a scheduled aircraft type for a much inferior one, a process popularly known in the aviation community as ‘getting TGed’.

Things are bad enough as it is, with those five 777-200ERs (HS-TJR — this oldest of the lot was restored much later than the others — TJS, TJT, TJV and TJW; HS-TJU will hopefully never come back) popping up every now and then, but the situation was much worse before the pandemic, with 1990s-/early-2000s-vintage non-ER 777-200s and -300s disgracing the fleet. (No, NOT THE A330-300: that elegant twinjet is one of my favourite widebodies, all the more so in TG’s violet livery, and I’m only too glad it has brought it back, even if only three of them!) In stark contrast, SriLankan, despite having so few aircraft in the first place, never fails to equip all of them with modern IFE and upholstery, from aging A320s and A330-200s — I flew such an A330-200 twice on the same day in April 2023, as well as a now-retired A321 during this very Diwali trip — to the latest A330-300s and A320/1neos.

The Oneworld airline brings so much delight to me, delight that the Star Alliance founder-member fails to do every time it sends a 777-200ER, despite having what I consider to be the world’s best colour scheme — as violet is my favourite colour — and an exquisite-looking IFE on the A350 and 787. Indeed, I’d had my share of good flights on Thai Airways in 2022 — with three on the A350 in June 2022 alone, and one of its two 787-9s in December — but such would not be the case in 2023. Sadly, there was also a 777-200ER in June 2022, perhaps my worst flight of all time — thanks in no small part to snafus by the government-run Chennai Airport — and now, instead of the promised A350, it was to be yet another 777-200ER now in November 2023, on a route which more often than not is operated by the A350. (However, it always runs the risk of being switched to the 777-200ER or, less disastrously, the 787-8.)

To add insult to injury, this plane, HS-TJR, is currently the oldest plane in the entire Thai Airways fleet — being restored to service in March 2023 after a three-year grounding (HS-TJU will hopefully not make a comeback like this one did) — now that 747s, A340s and non-ER 777s have been shown the door. Worse still, I’d flown the A350 on the inbound leg (TG325) to Bengaluru in June 2022, and in fact the inbound aircraft this time had all but scheduled to be an A350, but stupidly I didn’t look at Flightradar24 until well after clearing the security check. Imagine the horror when I found that it was not a sexy-smooth A350, but yet another disgusting 777-200ER, that would carry me to Bangkok tonight. My only HS-registered aircraft of 2023, more’s the pity, compared to five in 2022!

TL;DR: I have a love–hate relationship with Thai Airways — loving its livery, colours and slew of new A350s — but will hate the 777-200ER to my dying day, unlike SriLankan which is pure love, all the more so because the Oneworld carrier does so much (and with so much friendliness!) with so little resources and aircraft at hand.

With all the A350s coming in the short term and so many 787s on order, I still hold out hope that TG’s management will finally see some sense, and go all-in on the A350 and 787 for the foreseeable future — in addition to the 777-300ER, three of which (HS-TTA–TTC) have a first-class product — instead of playing to the Thai Royal Family’s whims and fancies. The 777-200ER must be retired with immediate effect — I can’t emphasise this enough (having suffered it twice) — but since I love A330-300s, I’ll be happy to see that one stay on a little while longer.

What can be worse than a repeat registration? If only I knew the answer…

Friday, 17 November. A not-so-good week-long Diwali holiday was coming to a close, not-so-good because the entire family wound up sick, and hence there were none of the crackers and celebrations that you usually associate with one of India’s biggest festivals. So I was hoping for some good cheer as I left Indian shores, which sadly was not forthcoming tonight!

I noticed that the aircraft scheduled for the TG325 flight to Bengaluru was actually HS-THF, the very first A350 — and Thai Airways aircraft — I’d ever flown. Now I don’t like to fly repeat registrations, and internally I was giggling and blushing out of embarrassment. However, what lay in store was a much more cruel blow of destiny (I know, I know, first-world problems) than getting a repeat registration — and I’d only know on clearing security at Kempegowda Airport that it would NOT be a nice Airbus taking me to Bangkok, but a horrible Boeing. (No, I’m not against the company as such, unethical and even murderous as it may be, but I will go out of my way to avoid the 737 — MAX or otherwise.)

Meanwhile, another Boeing widebody — a very nice one in contrast to this disgrace — would ferry me over to Singapore at the end of a long afternoon cris-crossing the malls of Bangkok, from the ICONSIAM to the Siam Discovery/Center/Paragon group of malls. This would be A9C-FC, a 787-9 of Gulf Air, which was scheduled for the GF166 BKK–SIN–BAH rotation: this flight operates thrice a week, going via Singapore, and complements Gulf Air’s existing GF150/151 service between Bahrain and Bangkok that does not involve Singapore.

At 7:45pm, a couple of hours before leaving home, I finally managed to put together a precious collection of inflight magazines that my dad had painstakingly collected over nearly two decades. We’d moved to Bengaluru from Chennai in May, and while all these magazines had survived the moved, goodness knows where they were kept — until I found them all hiding in a very hard-to-access loft. Well worth the effort, but probably not the best thing to do barely a few hours before a flight — unless you’re as crazy as me!

Among them was the August 2019 issue of Vistara’s eponymous magazine, the month when it launched its first international flights, from Delhi and Mumbai to Singapore. At the time, it didn’t have the flat-bed A321neos and A321LRs that it has today — the LRs fly as far afield as Hong Kong and Denpasar from Delhi, and Mauritius from Mumbai — and instead had to make do with its A320neos, which don’t have seatback IFE.

The airline never went beyond Delhi and Mumbai for its international network, and neglected Bengaluru and everyone else — with the exception of a flight from Pune (PNQ) to Singapore, this being the second-largest city in western Maharashtra state after Mumbai, but with hardly any international flights at all.

9:30pm. A Toyota Etios sedan belonging to a driver acquaintance of ours finally turned out of my family’s apartment complex — I having said goodbye to my parents and granny beside our building’s lift (they typically accompany me to the airport, but not this time) — and took me, alone, on the 1.5-hour journey all the way northeast to Kempegowda Airport.

En route, I was mesmerised by all the bright shops and neon lights, and such activity and colour is simply non-existent on most Singaporean streets. Another noteworthy landmark was the famed Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B) campus on Bannerghatta Road in the south of the city, not far from home.

I was simply astounded when I came across the consulate for Slovakia! What was a small Central European country — nowhere as famous as its big neighbours Poland, Czechia and Hungary — doing in Bengaluru?! I was beyond delighted, and nearly shouted ‘Dobrý večer to you, too!’ (Good evening!) out the window, but thought the better of it.

Oh how I miss the colourful, crowded streets of Indian cities, and equally the billboard-filled highways once you are out of the gridlock of the city centre. Again, the equivalent in Singapore is just rows and rows of trees lining up the East Coast Parkway that bypasses my home, which is just ten minutes from Changi, in stark contrast to the 1.5-hour, 45-km journey that I did now in Bengaluru.

Even if the plane’s bad, the airport will never be (this isn’t Chennai)

At nearly eleven, the car turned into the service lane for Kempegowda International Airport with a Jaguar F-Pace ad on one side, and soon thereafter zoomed into the airport driveway with a Lufthansa ad for its new Munich service zipping by.

This was my second time departing from the globally acclaimed Terminal 2, which won the UNESCO’s Prix Versailles (Special Award for an Interior) the following month. The first time was on the very day it opened for international operations (12 September 2023), but while the airline was extremely spartan — IndiGo is not known for its delectable cuisine, having shunned hot meals and ovens — at least the aircraft was a shiny A321neo and not this dilapidated thing.

The splendour at BLR T2 begins well before you reach the place, and the gorgeous bamboo chandeliers see to that. I located the drop-off counter for Thai Airways, whose logo was sandwiched between Star Alliance partner Ethiopian — which I flew twice in 2023 between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur — and the one-month-old brand of Air India Express, which had rebranded just the previous month, in October, and two months after the parent Air India in August.

I stand firmly convinced that AI Express in its rejuvenated form (as well as its predecessor, AirAsia India) is the best low-cost carrier in India by a mile, as a superb A320 flight from Delhi in February showed. But that’s for another time…

I sauntered towards the check-in counters, outside which a mini-Relay bookshop stood, but a more intriguing thing caught my attention on the screens.

The Indian government’s Swacchata Hi Seva (Cleanliness Alone is Service) cleanliness campaign was playing out on the TVs, showing the length and breadth of the country’s ordinary — mostly rural — people, and acting legend Amitabh Bachchan to boot. This is an extension to 2014’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan campaign that was launched soon after the Modi government (which is all but guaranteed to win a third term in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections) came to power.

For five whole minutes, blissfully unaware of the fact that HS-TJR had just landed, I just stood outside the gates and took picture of all the rural (and some urban) Indians — especially smiling young girls — who took it upon themselves to clean the community and country.

The calm before the gloom

Still under the illusion that I would be flying the A350 to Bangkok, I skipped towards the check-in counters, where Kylian Mbappé graced an advertisement for Gouvernement du France, called ‘Make it Iconic’.

This was my first time seeing the new Air India Express branding in person, with its sunny orange and aqua turquoise, and right beside it was the violet ‘smooth as silk’ branding of Thai Airways, with a bouquet of flowers placed at the counter.

Star Alliance partners Lufthansa and Ethiopian were also undergoing check-in elsewhere in the hall, as well as Air France–KLM and Qatar Airways from the other two alliances.

The baggage was checked in without much difficulty, and I proceeded to security, by which time it was midnight. This was by far the easiest security screening I’d ever had until then when departing India, as not one of the five trays — the officials insisted on separate trays for every little bag — was picked up for additional screening. It was only now that I opened Flightradar24… and received the shock of my life. Not the scheduled A350, but… you know only too well by now… my worst fears were realised, and lightning had struck for the second time.

You can well imagine my horror: I reeled and almost slumped onto the floor past the security screening stations. I did not have the will to continue, and I felt cheated and betrayed that Thai Airways had done this to me. Ultimate first-world problem, I hear you snicker inwardly, but believe me when I say that I had gone from boisterous and exuberant to a limp puppet in the span of a few seconds. I told my mother as much, and all she could do was wish me a safe journey, and to send the feedback to TG’s website.

Bright shop lights do not cure a gloomy mind

It was only with great difficulty that I pieced myself together and staggered to the high-ceilinged Bengaluru Duty Free. The Diwali light had long since gone out, and there was no reason for me to feel much joy at the time.

The remainder of the terminal’s yellow glowing lights would have worked their magic on another day, but now it was not to be. Contrast that to my Air India A350 flight at the end of February from the domestic side of this terminal, where I was waiting with bated breath to see the rejuvenation of the much-maligned Star Aliance member.

I dragged myself to Gate D1, amid the intensely bright luminaires above, where a crowd had already gathered that likely couldn’t care less whether the plane was a bare-bones but brand-new IndiGo A321neo, or a full-service but broken old Thai Airways 777-200ER.

In the distance I saw VT-ATD, the only A320neo — or, indeed, non-737 MAX 8 — to wear the new Air India Express livery, parked in her customary position after a day’s worth of flying. And then I pushed myself towards the dull, dated, depressing 777-200ER like a convict heading to the gallows to be guillotined.

At least Air India Express managed to give me the happiness that IndiGo usually doesn’t, or that Thai Airways has given me in the past but failed miserably this time around. 

The flight: Boarding and departure

Flight: Thai Airways International TG326/THA326
Date: Saturday, 18 November 2023
Route: Bengaluru Kempegowda (VOBL/BLR) to Bangkok Suvarnabhumi (VTBS/BKK)
Aircraft: HS-THF, Airbus A350-900, named Yan Nawa HS-TJR, Boeing 777-200ER, named Nakhon Sawan
Age: 17 years 1 month at the time (built: 18 October 2006, delivered: 1 November 2006); stored from 25 March 2020 to 30 March 2023
Seat: 55K (starboard side, window)
Boarding: 12:30am IST, UTC +5:30 (2:00am Indochina Time (IST), UTC +7)
Departure: 1:23am IST (2:53am ICT)
Arrival: 6:10am ICT (4:40am IST)
Duration: 3 hours 17 minutes

Notes:
• Not only the second time on the Thai Airways 777-200ER, but also the second time departing from India at night to reach Bangkok early in the morning. The previous time was on 27 June 2022 on HS-TJW, the youngest of six 777-200ERs at TG, on TG338 from Chennai. That flight was even worse — probably my worst ever — as the airport officials ruined the check-in experience.
• Only HS-registered aircraft of 2023, which is all the more a shame. Parents have in fact warned me against flying Thai Airways for the foreseeable future.

At least there’s a duty-free magazine now — but Sawasdee will never return

Possibly the one good thing I could say was that there was at least a Thai Sky Shop duty-free magazine in the seat pocket, which none of my five TG flights in 2022 had. I steadfastly refused to take pictures of anything else. Many other Asia-Pacific airlines have gone this route — scrap the actual inflight magazine but retain the duty-free magazine — with Singapore Airlines, Emirates and SriLankan Airlines being the ones that I’ve flown. (Also, when I flew Garuda Indonesia in June 2023, there was no Colours inflight magazine, but this was resurrected in September.)

When I told Mom and Dad again about just how cheated I felt, Mom told me not to say bad things about an aircraft that, for all its antiquity and awfulness, had been safely carrying millions of people to and from Bangkok for the seventeen years of its existence. They both prayed for a safe flight and wished for me to return — the next month, December — in much better spirits.

(I was exaggerating when I said that ‘it never happens’ and ’never comes to BLR’, because the 777-200ER is, sadly, far from rare on Thai Airways’ Bengaluru and Chennai routes — replacing the regular A350-900 or 787-9, respectively, a bare minimum of 6 or 7 days a month at the very least. The less offensive 787-8 (HS-TQ* series), which I’ve never flown, is quite common to both cities as well.)

This, the endcard of the safety video, is the one and only picture I took of the grainy, boxy, ugly 4:3 monitor. Can you even read the ‘A Star Alliance Member’ text in the corner (something that Singapore Airlines’ safety video does not have)? The less spoken about this monstrosity of a display, the better.

Once again, a TG 777-200ER had to stick out like a sore thumb in my flight log: I’d planned for all fifth-freedom flights in 2023 to be on Boeings — KL835 SIN–DPS, ET639/638 KUL–SIN–KUL and the upcoming GF166 BKK–SIN — and all other flights to be on Airbuses, but trust this thing to spoil that record. (However, I would be further proved wrong at the very end of 2023, when Vietnam Airlines also denied me its A350 and sent the 787-10 instead — a substitution I didn’t mind at all!)

In 2022, too, of the 15 aircraft I flew, HS-TJW was the only registration to end with an odd letter (A, C, E, …) as none of the others did.

I looked at TG’s other Indian flights, and it was the luck of the draw: you could get very lucky with an A350 in Star Alliance livery (at the time HS-THQ, recently also HS-THU) — or you could get an older but still nice A330-300, or, worst of all, this -200ER.

I continued to feel morose as the old engines took the plane on the taxi and down the runway. At least the seatmates were quiet, in contrast to the rowdy, ruckus-creating, drunk men in June 2022, who were high both literally and metaphorically.

We passed a row of AI Express (with the AirAsia India titles removed) and Vistara A320s, and also caught a Lufthansa A350 in the distance, before the noisy old engines took me up and away. As I mentioned, this was my second redeye from India to Bangkok, with the rotten luck of the TG 777-200ER from both Chennai and Bengaluru.

Masochist musings, mundane meals

These, the guide to the remote control, are the only pictures I bothered to take as regards the IFE. What an irony that there was an ad for the A380 below, an aircraft type that has rightfully (if sadly) been retired, as it proved to be too much machine and capacity for TG’s leisure crowds.

Below you see a number of morose musings that I’d been making in that state of despair.

1. Since TG denied me the A350, I thought it would be poetic justice if the Indian men’s cricket team — which had had a dream run as the host of the ongoing Cricket World Cup, being completely unbeaten — would be denied victory in the final. That is exactly what happened: Australia extended its record to six titles by stunning the crowds at Ahmedabad into shocked silence. (Also, the on-air graphics package used the same violet and pink as Thai Airways — my favourite colours!)

2. KLM’s 777-200ER PH-BQE was close to landing in Bengaluru, and I noted that unlike Asian airlines like TG, European airlines — KL, AF, BA and OS (Austrian) among others — have nicely refurbished their 777-200ERs, even though they are older than this 2006-built aircraft.

3 and 4. I thought that since the TG 777-200ER was inescapable and inevitable in my destiny, I might as well ensure that every year I would book on TG so as to intentionally get this awful aircraft. Yes, I’d decided to inflict suffering on myself here…

Some 50 minutes after departure, the meal was rolled out, and female flight attendant Sirima had run out of the Indian non-veg option, instead offering the vegetarian paneer, dal and rice dish. (I believe some Thai fish noodle dish was the only other option available.) They did, however, manage to serve chicken tikka strips on the side upon my request, and accompanying them were a baked half-circle of roti bread, butter, cashews, a dry bread roll, fruits (papayas, pineapples and dragonfruit) and a white chiffon cake for dessert.

Quite the varied meal, along with dual drinks (Coke and apple juice), but I must say it was rather ordinary, with the chicken tikka and cake the only saving grace. This was worlds away from the delectable, delicious purple cake I was served on the A350 to Bengaluru in 2022, with the equally purple IFE for company… ah, good times those!

Descending into an airport as old as the plane

As was the case at the end of June 2022, the sunrise over the Chao Phraya river cutting through Bangkok would not be accompanied by the graceful A350 winglet but the ugly non-wingletted 777-200ER’s stubby extension. For the record, Suvarnabhumi Airport was built in 2006, the same year as this plane, today the oldest in the TG fleet.

I’d already started to vent and pour out my frustration for this flight, which I published as a teaser for my far superior Garuda Indonesia A330-300 flight from Jakarta to Singapore in June 2023, with spellbinding boarding and landing music at that.

No sooner had we landed than we passed by a JAL 787-8 (JA823J) from Osaka (Kansai) as JL727 — funny that I also saw the same thing a week earlier at Bengaluru after a redeye from Colombo — as well as HS-XTI, a Thai AirAsia X A330-300 that had arrived from Tokyo (Narita) as XJ607.

For the record, HS-XJA and XJB, the only two A330-900neos at Thai AirAsia X, were both parked for nearly two years at Bangkok’s low-cost Don Mueang (DMK) airport. They are now headed for Brazil’s Azul Linhas Aéreas as PR-ANB and ANC, as the latter is going all-in on the A330-900neo for widebody operations, and is looking to discard its two A350s, PR-AOW and AOY.

I could not wait to step the hell off this wretched plane, but before doing so I took a picture of the rear bulkhead mural that you see in the cover image of this report, a pretty mosaic it was too. I shared my feedback with the cabin crew, emphasising that I do love TG’s livery and product, but because of this last-minute substitution, my opinion of this particular flight took a turn for the worse — though that didn’t reflect on the crew themselves or the service they offered, which was well above par for the price.

And, for once, there was no jetbridge to the terminal but instead a staircase to the bus… for which I had to wait a good 15 minutes.

The Great airport tarmac ride: Bangkok early-morning edition

Agonisingly, the few passengers directly in front of me were the last to board the bus that arrived, and it would be over 15 minutes before the next one arrived. Way to keep disappointing me, Thai!

At least this was able to afford me some great views of the planes on the tarmac, including several A320s of the now-discontinued Thai Smile brand. One took off (as above) while two others taxied around the runway, as I noted down their registrations and continued venting my anger.

Further afield stood Drukair Royal Bhutan Airlines’ only sharkletted A319, A5-JSW, and BKK — served via Siliguri (IXB) in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal — is a critical route for the Himalayan kingdom’s flag carrier. I turned around and faced the nose of my ugly, stubby 777-200ER, christened Nakhon Sawan, while Bangkok Airways ATR 72s and Thai Smile’s A320ceos filled up the background.

Meanwhile a Turkish Airlines A330-300 (TC-JOK) lifted off as TK59, as did a FedEx 767-300ER, keeping my iPhone camera busy until my legs were finally relieved from their pain and rewarded with a bus.

I was most surprised to see a Thai VietJetAir sharkletted A321ceo, HS-VKM, in more or less the entire WOW air livery except the tail and a bit of the engines. Unlike most Westerners, Southeast Asians are highly unlikely to know that there was a low-cost airline in Iceland called WOW air, which collapsed spectacularly in early 2019 shortly after inducting A330-300s.

This bird was delivered to WOW air as TF-NOW in 2017, and I was shocked to see Thai VietJetAir change barely anything about the livery. At least the sharkletted silhouette made for sexy poses as the A321 swooshed onto the runway, the bus’s windows according much grander views than the infamous terminal windows could.

Further down the ride stood HS-VKT, a sharkletted A320ceo with no colour at all except the tail. This was followed by HS-PPB, a Bangkok Airways A319 named after the city itself, along with the tell-tale violet tails of Thai Airways widebodies in the distance.

At length, surrounded by seemingly innumerable Trip.com ads, the bus came to a halt with some pretty awesome planes in the distance. Two Thai 777-300ERs, HS-TKN and HS-TTA (the latter with first class), and more interestingly All Nippon Airways’ 787-9 JA894A in the Pikachu livery, having arrived as NH849 from Tokyo Haneda. (I’d seen another Pikachu 787-9, Scoot’s 9V-OJJ, just two months before.)

I disembarked from the bus at around 7:15, well over an hour after landing, glad that at least this ordeal had come to an end for now.

The ‘airport of smiles’, amirite?

As if the 777-200ER weren’t ugly enough, I now had to enter Thailand’s main gateway airport which looks grand from the outside but is actually downright ugly inside — except the top floor with its luxury boutiques, that is. It has no right to call itself the ‘Airport of Smiles’, and its designers should be punished for such unappealing industrial décor!

These were some of the aircraft on the ground at the time, including some interesting specimens: 4R-ABQ, the all-white SriLankan A321 I’d flown the previous week; A7-BOG, a Qatar Airways 777-300ER originally from Virgin Australia; SU-GCF, an EgyptAir passenger-converted-to-freighter A330-200.

It was only after standing at the immigration counters for half an hour — this was my first time ever clearing immigration at Suvarnabhumi — that I could finally make it landside to Thailand, for the first time since my first visit to the country in the summer of 2016, on Thai AirAsia via Don Mueang. Interestingly, perhaps due to the fact that the kingdom was now visa-free for Indian nationals, all the instructions on the passport-scanning device at the counters were in Hindi!

As I whined on WhatsApp: ‘Bus took long time to arrive. Long ride to terminal. Long line for immigration. Long ride to city. Get the point?’

There was a mind-boggling variety of flights from airlines you don’t see at Singapore, including Cambodia’s Lanmei Airlines (LQ670 from Phnom Penh), China’s Spring Airlines (9C6293 from Xi’an) and Capital Airlines (JD419 from Hangzhou) and Russia’s Aeroflot (SU272 from Moscow, SU658 from Irkutsk) and S7 Airlines (S75307 from Irkutsk). I’d see a lot more Russian aircraft a few hours later before boarding the Gulf Air 787, including that lime-green S7 737.

India, the Maldives, Thailand, even Vietnam (Aeroflot launched Ho Chi Minh City service in January 2024) are fair game for Russian carriers after the invasion of Ukraine — but Singapore most definitely is not. Not only is it one of Russia’s ‘unfriendly’ countries, but SQ closed down its Moscow office in mid-2023 a year after indefinitely suspending flights due to the war. Aeroflot’s planned Singapore service in October 2020, too, never materialised, first due to COVID and then because of the sanctions.

A barrage of Bangkok ads at the baggage belts

I’l keep these descriptions short, as they tend to get repetitive after a while.

1. Welcome-to-Thailand videos by the tourist office, including in pseudo-Bengali (second row, left) — as a Bengali I can tell you that that’s not grammatical — and Russian on the right.

2. Samsonite’s ‘Styled Tough’ ad campaign, featuring an ecletic bunch of young Asians.

3. SIM card kiosks and ads for the sprawling centralwOrld complex — one of my must-visits later that afternoon — along with Thailand’s NaRaYa brand for luxury goods.

4. Visa’s promotional campaign for Thai tourism, which went: ‘You’ve heard endless stories about tuk-tuks/shopping in Thailand… Now you’re here to uncover the real story.’ (Full resolution here.)

Some of the baggage-claim destinations, including a Swiss-codeshared TG flight, as well as a Finnair notice at the baggage assistance counters.

I knew that I wouldn’t last the day without a local SIM card, since Singtel’s prepaid plan was no good, so headed to the dtac kiosk. (dtac, owned by Norway’s Telenor, merged with competitor TrueMove H earlier in 2023, to take on arch-rival AIS. This is similar to Telenor’s Malaysian subsidiary, Digi, merging with local telecom conglomerate Axiata’s Celcom, which overtook Maxis as Malaysia’s largest telco,)

dtac’s offering was good enough for the 10 or so hours I’d be spending here, and of the four tourist SIM cards I’d bought in 2023 — the others being two Telkomsel (in Batam and Bali) and one Viettel (across Hanoi–Ho Chi Minh City) — this was definitely the shortest-lived and the cheapest. 

At 8:20 I headed out of the baggage-claim area, past the unending placards with tourists’ and hotels’ names, past more dtac–True 5G counters and the Thai Airways lost-and-found office, and went downstairs to the baggage-storage service located by the Suvarnabhumi train station entrance.

The remaining details, before I began my afternoon of mall-hopping in Bangkok — are below in the ‘Travelling Bonus’ section, and it’s quite telling that this report has barely any details of the aircraft (horrible as it was) and much more of the BKK and BLR airports.

To hell with the 777-200ER — the past was now past, a whole day in the city lay in store, and it was just too good to waste, because who knows if I’ll be able to travel visa-free to Thailand again after the current waiver scheme for Indians ends in May!

Bonus : Click here display hide

9:15am, Suvarnabhumi Airport. This bookstore chain doesn’t write its name in English, but you can know it from its website, Naiin.com, which is written close by. On the basement level were cafés, bookstores (Naiin and otherwise) and the entrance to Suvarnabhumi Station, next to which was a small stall called AIRPORTELs (yes, only the final S is lowercase) which offered to store my heavy luggage for as long as I was in the city.

Then there was an ad for China Southern Airlines, which proclaimed itself as Asia’s largest airline. No matter what you say about the quality of Mainland Chinese airlines — I think they’re the worst in the world as far as brand image and typography is concerned — there’s no denying that CZ, despite pandemic-related clampdowns, really is the largest airline in Asia.

A 7-Eleven here, a Naiin there — with many English-to-Thai translated books — and I found myself at Coffee World, which despite its name is a full-fledged restaurant serving Western and Thai cuisine.

I ordered a rich, delectable red Panang Chicken curry with Thai iced tea for the sum of only THB 230 (≈US$6), and spied an Indian man with a most weird T-shirt quote — ‘Dal Bhat person 24 hours’ (lentils and rice all day) it said!

There was a German-speaking couple at the next table who asked me what dish it was, and were taken aback at the answer.

Meanwhile I’d started a very interesting exploration of a different kind: I’m planning to travel to Northeast Asia in June, with the intent of visiting the airports in Seoul, Taipei, Tokyo and Hong Kong. (The original plan was to fly to Seoul on the Asiana A350, and return via Taipei on EVA and Starlux.) Since it’s too hard for Indian nationals to get a visa for these countries, I’ll be happy just flying from one airport to another without ever crossing immigration — call me crazy, but for me it’s aviation above all else!

For starters, I checked out the flights between Singapore, Seoul and Taipei, to get a feel of the schedules and airlines on those routes. And then I saw the big breaking news that Air India’s maiden A350 had taken a ferry flight from where else but Singapore, where the new livery was painted.

At 10-ish I was done with the eating, and though the first few hours of the day had been ruined by the 777-200ER, I wasn’t about to let the rest of the day go to shambles as well. I ordered a Grab car, and soon enough a Toyota Corolla Cross SUV turned up to whisk me to my first destination of the day, the sprawling ICONSIAM mall.

I’ve gotta say, the road leading out from BKK — this was my very first time using it — had some very stunning views: an Etihad 777-300ER (A6-ETG as EY408) and a Finnair A350-900 (OH-LWM as AY141) among them, and the day could only get better from here!