Review of Thai Airways flight from Bangkok to Brussels in Economy

Introduction

After having spend 18 wonderful days in Asia, it was unfortunately time for us to return home. For some odd reasons flights to Amsterdam were extremely expensive around those dates for some unknown reasons as there was no fair or any other event to be witnessed. Instead I opted to fly to Brussels instead (which only adds 30 minutes to my train ride back home) as it was half the price from what flights to Amsterdam were asking. 

When I decided to book my trip back in July 2024, THAI only recently announced that they were returning their flight to Brussels after a long hiatus when they canceled their flights to Brussels due to the pandemic. This date happened to be just a few days before I wanted to return home and managed to find some affordable fares with TG back to Brussels for about 700 EUR (2 persons, one way).

So all in all I spend about 740 EUR per person (x2) for a trip that was covering Amsterdam to Tokyo, Tokyo to Bangkok and Bangkok to Brussels, which I found quite decent to be honest and definitely cheaper than most fares I could find as a return flight (which consisted of only two flights, rather than three).

Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport

As we were travelling with quite a lot of luggage and we did stay at Staybridge Suites Bangkok Thong Lor, the only viable option was to use a taxi to go to the airport, so about 3.5 hours prior to our scheduled departure, I decided to order a Grab Taxi for about 450 THB (Took the SUV option) and the chap brought us over to the terminal in about 45 minutes. 

Traffic died down a lot this night as Grab Taxi was asking double the price when I checked about two hours earlier.

The guy asked what airline we had for tonight and dropped us off right in front of our designated gate area.

Luckily this part of the terminal was a bit calmer than the middle part despite the number of longhaul flights departing in the next three hours.

Once again we did proceed to one of those self check-in counters to grab our boarding passes and luggage tag. The system did allow my wife to check-in without any additional check, which is usually the case given that she is holding a residence card only for the Netherlands. They however did check it when we were at the gate to be absolute sure later on, despite me already providing those details upon online check-in.

The drop off section once again wasn't overly crowded, though took a few minutes as some passengers were in line who didn't even print a luggage tag with one of those counters and staff had to explain them to grab one first including a boarding pass to drop their luggage.

A few minutes later, it was our turn and was quite surprised to see that my luggage somehow lowered by two kilograms despite not having lost a single item in my luggage. I guess a few objects in my luggage decided to be on a diet and lost some weight :).

After all the check-in and luggage formalities done, it was now time to head upstairs to security. There was quite a line to actually get into the security, however security itself took no longer than about ten minutes to clear or so I'd say.

Passport control was even shorter with most people being guided to one of the automatic border control stations. I decided to head over to a manned counter, which was definitely the right call as it took less than a minute to clear while others were waiting for five minutes or more to pass the automatic border control. After twenty minutes or so, we were through security and immigration and I must admit that Bangkok really did improve to streamline this procedure.

Instead of turning left or right in the terminal after security, we now had to procedure straight ahead as our flight was departing from the new satellite terminal. It's my first time departing from it, so let's see how it is.

Before entering the train, a staff member is actually verifying whether one needs to go there or not to prevent them from messing up as it takes about 20 minutes or so to return. The ride itself wasn't all that long with nothing to see as it was underground.

While the main terminal has the famous 3-headed serpent Naga as a statue, the satellite terminal is using a more down-to-earth theme with two huge statues of Elephants.

Miracle First Class Lounge - Satellite Terminal

As Bangkok Suvarnabhumi offers a lot of options with your priority pass, I opted to use one in the satellite terminal and check whether it is alright to use. The Lounge is definitely a spacious and gives you a relaxing vibe, while not being overly crowded with just a select few passengers opting to use it.

If you don't really fancy sitting behind a table, they also have a section where one could sit down or more relaxing chairs, however half of them weren't actually comfortable to sit in. It is also a bit less private as there is a huge glass window dividing the terminal and the lounge, however not a lot of crowd walks by as the upper level in the satelitte terminal has only two lounges and nothing else. I believe Emirates is also building a lounge here, which as of now is not opened as of yet.

It does come with a view over the apron, yet with the night and reflection of the lights, one can't really see a lot in the night.

The area in the middle is more focused on the beverages with an extensive selection of softdrinks, coffee, tea and alcoholic beverages including hard liquor, though you can also find some cereals and some icecream here.

On the side one can find multiple options for some food, which mostly is focused on the warmer options.

I didn't really open them all for a photo as I found it odd to do, but most of the food options here were Asian-related ranging from some stir-fried vegetables, meat and some curries and obviously rice in the end.

Corn soup was also available.

And a salad bar at the end of this kitchen island.

Behind the kitchen island, hidden from most passengers, one can also find some dumplings, pastries and some sandwiches. 

But at the end you could find a cooking station which is shared with the other lounge which is also a miracle lounge, though for business class. You also have access to that one with Priority pass and they did look quite similar I must admit in terms of comfort.

The cooking station had four options to chose from.

1. Kao Man Kai
A chinese styled dish of steamed rice with chicken.
2. Wonton Soup
A chicken broth soup with wontons filled with a mix of shrimp and pork.
<b style="">3. Chicken Noodle Soup
Noodle soup with vegetables and chicken
<b style="">4. Somtam Thai
A spicy green papaya salad originally from Esan (Northeastern Thai)

To the gate

We spend about 90 minutes in the lounge before it was time to head to our departure gate. As you can see above, the top floor is quite deserted with little to no action, other than those two louges of Miracle. On the right side of the picture below, you can find a banner of Emirates where they are building a new lounge, which suggests to me that Emirates may be moving over to this satellite anytime soon.

Once a floor down, the area became a bit more lively, yet not overcrowded. I find the atmosphere here to be more pleasant than the main terminal with several decorations and statues.

The main benefit of this terminal is that they decided not to seal the damn gate off and one was able to freely move around rather than wait in a seated area. Plenty of seating is available and to me it feels like it is not going to be a full flight anytime soon given that we were very close to boarding time.

The terminal itself isn't the best for planespotting at night, though I was able to see our aircraft that was going to bring us over to Brussels. 

HS-TQF, a 9.4 year old (at time of flying) Boeing 787-8 was going to bring us over to Brussels. This specific bird was newly delivered to THAI on August 2015 and is named after the Kong Krailat District in the Sukothai province. It is powered by two RollsRoyce Trent 1000's and is configurated with a cabin of 264 seats. 24 in J, 240 in Y..

Mind you that the 787 of THAI are in a configuration of 2-2-2 in J and the standard 3-3-3 in Y.

TG 934, destination Brussels!

Boarding was called about ten minutes past our scheduled boarding time and went smoothly. My wife was called out like I said before for a visa check, which she passed in just a few minutes and we made it to our seat. Soon it was clear that today's load was far from impressive with the load in J class being 30% or so and Y's load was probably around the same, which meant that after take off, everyone could move around to find their sleeping spot in one of the many rows!

Legroom is absolutely decent given that I'm 1.83m tall (6'') and this 787 was definitely better maintained than the 787 of a similar age of Air India, which I took in May 2024.

The view from our window.

The seat itself comes with an USB-A plug, a fairly decent IFE system with a remote, a cupholder and a coathook. A socket was also available at your seat if you needed it.

Individual airvents are installed.

A view of the cabin.

A pillow was awaiting at your seat, but no blankets. Though blankets were available on request as I asked for one to give it to my wife later on as she was quite cold in the plane.

Pushback was engaged about 10 minutes past our departure time.

And about 12 minutes later (22 minutes past our scheduled departure time) we were rolling down runway 02R for our northerly departure towards Brussels.

Once airborne and above an certain altitude that was considered safe by the pilots, the flight attendants came by to provide us our complimentary earphones. The same shitty quality as one can expect on any other airline, though at least they provided them unlike MU did on my flight a few weeks ago.

While the entertainment in the seatpocket on the A320 fleet is somewhat limited, THAI does provide you with a bit more options on their longhaul destinations as the literature contained a safety card, disposal bag, WiFi card to connect and their Duty Free Magazine.

Their IFE system was a bit slow to respond, yet did offer enough to survive the 12 hour flight to Bangkok, though I must admit that I haven't used mine during the entire flight nor did I see someone actually using them as everyone was looking for a spot to sleep after dinner.

Next the flight attendants quickly came by with the meal service, which was obviously quick and swift given the low load. Options were either a vegetarian pasta or Pad Kaprow. Given that I usually choose any Asian dish over an European one, the choice was easy and chose the Thai option.

Starter: Green Papaya salad (Som Tam) with slices of chicken in a sweet & sour dressing
Main: Pad kaprow Kai - Stir-fried Holy Basil with Chicken & Fried Egg
Dessert: A chocolate mousse
Sides: Breadroll, Crackers, Canary Cheese & a Bottle of Water.

The starter was refreshing, yet not spicy. The main meal itself was a tad too sweet, though still edible and the mousse was too thick and made me think of those awful cheap chocolate bars I absolute hate.

Once everyone was served, flight attendants came by to serve us some drinks. I opted for a glass of white wine.

Eventually I asked my wife if I can exit our row so I can manage to have some proper sleep in one of the middle rows. Eventually I tugged myself in one of the middle row and had a solid 7 hour sleep to be fair before I had to pay a visit to one of the lavatories.

Despite being a low load, the lavatories were kept in pristine condition and were cleaned on regular intervals with amenities being filled once it was necessary.

Not a lot of amenities were available, though some eau de toilette and toothbrushes with toothpaste were available.

A very dark cabin :)

Eventually found myself napping a bit more before being woken by the cabin lights when we were overflying Slovakia as it was time for our breakfast to be served. I made it back to my wife's location to sit next to here as we had about 90 minutes left before we would be landing in Brussels.

While THAI did give us a choice for dinner, no choice is being given for breakfast and the meal is the same for everyone.

The main meal was an omelette with some veggies in tomato sauce, a sausage and some potatoes. It was served with some yoghurt, fruits, croissant and a bottle of water.

I'm really not a fan of omelettes and they tend to be even worse for me on airplanes, so I can't really admit that I enjoyed my breakfast. I simply opted to have the croissant with some jam, yoghurt and the fruits.

Breakfast was cleaned about 30 minutes to landing when pilots informed us that we were close and currently in our descend to Brussels. 

Touchdown was about 5 minutes ahead of our schedule on 25L.

And five minutes past seven, we were docking at our gate meaning that we did arrive right on the scheduled arrival time parked next to a 787 of Hainan Airlines.

The aftermath of our row…

Disembarkation followed soon after and went quite fast given the low load of our aircraft, however as it is kind of peek hour at Brussels in the morning with tons of longhaul arrival, passport control was tedious and very slow for non-eu passports (as my wife was a non-eu citizen). It took more than a hour to clear only to hear one of the immigration officer telling me next time to follow the EU passport sign as they didn't really care about my wife's passport given that she does have a residence card….. Great, if I only knew before.

Given that immigration took about an hour to clear for us, I kind of expected our luggage to be on the belt by now…. Yet it took another five minutes or so for our luggage to even appear, so guess the wait was either at immigration or at baggage claim…. Brussels really need to step up their game regarding their immigration & baggage claim…. Of all the times I did arrive into Brussels Airport, Luggage always took more than 45 minutes to even appear on the belt.

It's a good thing that I bought a flexible ticket, so we managed to catch the next train back home to the Netherlands.

And this concludes our Asian trip of 2024!