Thai Airways International seems to have come to the end of its desert crossing. The Thai airline has confirmed the expansion of its intercontinental network with the resumption of certain routes abandoned during its restructuring in 2013 and 2014. The national carrier has announced its return to Moscow from Bangkok from November with four weekly flights. The airline will also resume flights to Tehran, a destination it abandoned in 1979, with Thai planning to serve the Iranian capital with three weekly flights from October.
The carrier, which is receiving its first Airbus A350s, will put them into service this autumn on routes to Australia, including Melbourne. In 2017, Thai Airways already announced that the delivery of new Boeing 787-900s would enable it to resume services to the United States. The Thai airline had suspended its non-stop routes in 2011 and stopped its Bangkok-Seoul-Los Angeles flight at the end of 2014, shortly before the downgrading of Thailand's civil aviation rating by the US authorities. Anticipating a likely return of its civil aviation to Category 1 next year, Thai already has plans to serve the USA, Los Angeles in the first instance, but there is also talk of San Francisco or Seattle.
Finally, on a regional level, the airline plans to increase the number of flights to Jakarta and Manila in order to optimise its Bangkok hub, which is under-utilised compared to other major hubs in the region.
