Review of Nok Air flight from Bangkok to Ubon in Economy

Introduction

As we arrived the previous day in Bangkok via Vietnam, we decided to head over to my wife's parents the following day. In order to get to Si Sa Ket (where my parents in law live), you could either take a bus or train ride from Bangkok or catch a flight to Ubon Ratchathani from either DMK or BKK and arrange a mode of transportation from there (I hired a rental car). The choice is obvious though as this report would not have been here if we didn't take a flight, so yeah, we chose the most comfortable option.

Ubon Ratchathani however is served by most airlines in Thailand with multiple flights per day. AirAsia, Thai Lionair & Nok Air all offer daily flights from DMK, while THAI & Thai Vietjet offer direct flights from BKK. Given that the hotel we were staying, BKK would be the most convenient option to be used, however the problem was that TG had an early flight and a late flight and both me and my wife wanted to take it a bit easier and head over to Ubon around 12'ish or early afternoon. The only airlines that offered us reasonable timings were either DD or SL providing us with the best option for prices that were similar to each other. 

2023 and 2024 were tough years for DD as they had huge financial struggles with their network shrinking to the bare minimums, 2025 seems to be somewhat more promising as DD is slowly increasing their number of aircraft again and decided to start their flights to Ubon Ratchathani again as of last march 2025 with an expected grow of six additional aircraft to their fleet. (B737-800s). As I always used to love to fly with DD and didn't fly with them for quite a while, I decided to book them for this leg.

The ticket turned out to be around 3700 THB for 2 persons (+/- 96 EUR or 115 USD) with the most expensive fare ''NOK MAX'' which gives you a luggage allowance of 25kg, seat selection for your flight, access to Nok Air's Lounge (domestic flights only) and priority boarding. It's actually funny though as this fare turned out to be cheaper than me booking us the cheapest fare with the add-on of luggage as flights weren't that cheap for this day.

Bangkok Don Mueang International Airport

While DMK nowadays is connected to the rail link of Bangkok, yet the station is still quite a walk from the terminal, I'd still say that taking a taxi to the airport is the most comfortable way to get here and so we did. Ordered a taxi about 2.30 hours prior to our flight via Grab for 16 USD that brought us over to the airport in about 45 minutes or so.

Once dropped off by the chap, my wife and I decided to find the check-in counter of Nok Air to drop our luggage. At this point it was very quiet and were helped by the ground attendant immediately, however I think this may have been a contender for the world's slowest ground attendant ever as he seemed very uninterested in his job and was sitting idle several times throughout our process. After about ten minutes into the check-in (mind you that we were helped immediately), he instructed us to face the camera on top of the counter, so we could enter and board by face.

Thank god it wasn't crowded though!

Once your photo is captured at check-in, one could enter the security control via one of those booth and you will manage to bypass the majority of people. Obviously you are allowed to reject the photo and use the normal lanes, however they seemed quite busy at the time we went through. All in all despite the very slow check in process, it took us 15 to 20 minutes (including check-in procedure) to get airside.

While I normally have access to multiple lounges in DMK through my priority pass including the lounge I'm about to visit, I didn't need to use as Nok Air's most expensive fare gives you access to their lounge which is located between the piers of gate 41-46 and 50-56 right behind this small structure that should represent a cabin with some facts about Thai aviation, yet I can't tell you anything about it as it's written in Thai only from what I saw.

Nok Air's lounge isn't overly large and is awfully decorated in their yellowish colour with a limited selection of hot foods, pastries and instant noodles. A few fizzy drinks, coffee and tea are also available, but no alcohol is served here. The lounge itself is also never too crowded and the seating is comfortable.

On the smaller kitchen isle you can find some cookies, snacks, croissants and pastries.

The bigger kitchen isle offers hot food with the black soup kettle having some corn soup in it, the others in the aft you could find some satay, white rice, stir-fried veggies and an international dish, which I unfortunately can't remember anymore.

And you can find instant noodles and drinks on the kitchen counter in the back. In terms of drinks, one has a very few options between fizzy drinks, tea, coffee, water and juices as no alcohol is served like I said before. One can find cutlery here too.

A meeting table can also be found in the back of the lounge, however never seen anyone using it in the past few times I have been into this lounge.

Eventually came back to my seat for the next hour with some coffee, chicken satay and some pastries.

About five minutes to our scheduled boarding time, we left the lounge and it turned out that the closest and first gate we came accross was assigned to our flight and gave us the opportunity to spot our bird that was going to bring us over to Ubon.

HS-DBQ is a 10.9 year old (at time of flying) Boeing 737-800 that was newly delivered to Nok Air in July 2014 and carries it's 10th Anniversary livery as this bird was delivered to them when the airline turned 10 years old (obviously?!) and is named Nok Bussarakam, which I believe is named after some sort of Hummingbird and is configured with 189 all economy seats.

I highly doubt whether this specific aircraft has ever had a paint job after it's delivery to them as the livery itself looks very tired with some sort of whiter spots where stickers were attached to the aircraft with advertisement of their airline.

Gate 41 was attached to our flight like I said before and those who actually did the face scan during check-in were allowed to bypass those who didn't and neither documents were checked as the face scan itself was enough. It worked flawlessly for both me and my wife and we were through in a matter of seconds.

Upon embarking the cabin, we were kindly greeted by one of the flight attendants who welcomed us aboard and found my way to seat 07A. The first thing I noticed is that the cabin looked very dated and the airline intended to use all bits of it before they really need to perform a refurbishment on this aircraft. Legroom isn't all that impressive either in the front, but sufficient for an hour long flight. 

While I didn't mind the visuals of the aircraft itself, my biggest concert of the entire flight would now appear and would go by the name ''Seat belt''. This seat belt isn't in the perfect condition anymore as it used to be as you can see in the photo below and the strength of the seat belt itself is also reduced due to it's tear. That's not even the worst part, but this seat belt must have snapped before as the mechanics of Nok Air found a better solution in order to replace it by simply cutting the part of the seat belt that snapped……. 

While I am obviously not the skinniest person on this earth and do have a few extra pounds, I barely could lock my seatbelt on this specific flight and this has never happened to me with any other airline, so I decided to compare it to my wife's seatbelt and found out that my seatbelt was about 25 cm shorter than it was to hers… This kind of confirmed to me that they simply cut the part of the seatbelt that was broken and fixed it together in the end to not install a new seatbelt.

The view from this seat isn't too shabby though, however it wasn't that easy to capture some videos or photos of the outside view as my window had a lot of scratch marks and had to find certain angles to actually be able for my camera to focus.

The cabin is however fitted with individual air vents, reading lights and a call a flight attendant button.

The view of the cabin when boarding was fully completed with the blue Boeing skylight turned on. It's not really the best match though with the yellowish tone of Nok Air itself.

Boarding was completed ahead of time and we pushed back from our gate about seven minutes prior to our scheduled departure time. Engines fired up and we were quickly on our way  for a departure from RWY 21L. Approaching the holding point, we found this small graveyard of Orient Thai aircraft sitting idle on the aft corner of the airport.

About five minutes past our scheduled departure time we were rolling for our departure to Ubon Ratchathani giving us some wonderful views over the city of Krung Thep (Bangkok's Thai name) itself.

Once we arrived at a safe altitude for us to move around, I opened the table to verify whether it was cleaned properly and it did pass the test.

The literature in the seatpocket contained of a sickbag, safety card, a BoB menu and Nok Air's magazine.

The buy on board menu of Nok Air isn't that extensive, but it does offer some selection of hot meals like three thai dishes and also about four Indian dishes, which also indicates the growing Indian tourism in Thailand itself and Nok Air having some flights into India. The prices of the snacks and drinks are also reasonable, yet obviously more expensive compared to what you pay at a local 7/11 shop.

The weather was quite active even at higher altitudes though.

As I bought a ''Max Fare'' with Nok Air, I was able to pre-order a free meal / snackbox via their website, but as I didn't know what to order as I only bought this fare because it turned out to be cheaper than the cheaper fare. So I never did really pre-order anything and was delivered a box like this by the flight attendants.

The box contained a bottle of water, cake and a cinnamon bun. Both pastries were rather dry and were only tested a day later as we were not hungry in the flight.

And about less than an hour into the flight we were already lining up for the runway and about to enter a very rainy Ubon.

Only to be follwed by a go around about 100 meters to touch down.

About two or three minutes after the go-around of the flight, the captain checked in with us to inform that we had to perform a go around due to the poor weather conditions at Ubon Ratchathani and that we would be entering a holding for about 30 minutes or so till weather was clearing up.

We eventually turned into a holding  which took about 45 minutes or so before the captain decided that the weather was good enough to shoot an approach.

Nicely performed holdings though

About 45 minutes into the hold, the captain checked in with us again stating that they would do an approach into the opposite direction to what we did previously as weather seemed to clear up on that side of the runway. He also apologized for the delay and told us that we would be heading back to Bangkok if this approach resulted into another go-around due to fuel regulations.

The weather indeed seems to be clearer on the opposite direction, but similar weather as the previous approach started to appear the closer we got to Ubon's runway.

Luckily enough we touched down about 25 minutes past our scheduled arrival time as the weather gods were in favour of us landing here only to let it pour down like crazy about five minutes past our actual arrival time.

Eventually disembarkation followed soon after by Jetbridge and would say bye to this specific seat.  Despite the poor seatbelt and legroom, the padding of the seat is quite comfy.

Taking a last photo of the aircraft that brought us over and the iconic beak of Nok Air.

Luggage didn't take long for it to appear as it is usually the case with domestic airports in Thailand as it was already on belt about five minutes past our disembarkation.

Luggage was quickly collected and off we were on our way to Sixt to pick up our rental car. 

Till the next report!