Over 11,000 foreign visitors per day have arrived in Thailand through Suvarnabhumi airport after authorities stopped requiring travellers to present a pre-travel RT-PCR test result last week, according to Airports of Thailand (AoT).
Kittipong Kittikachorn, director of Suvarnabhumi airport, said that the number of international arrivals through the airport has increased by 65%, compared with last month's figures.
Since the scrapping of the pre-travel Covid-19 test requirement on April 1, the number of international arrivals has increased to 11,623 per day. Last month, he said, the figure stood at 7,003 a day on average.
The number of international flights serving the airport has also risen to 141 per day, up 2.9% from 137 last month.
Mr Kittipong said the airport's Concourse C has been reopened to accommodate the increasing number of international arrivals. Concourses E, F and G were reopened earlier.
The passport checkpoint at Zone 1 has also reopened after it was closed for renovations during the height of the pandemic, he said.
In total, 56 passport check counters are now back in operation, boosting the airport's passenger handling capacity to 4,080 per hour, up from 3,450.
Since April 1, the number of passengers passing through the airport, on both domestic and international flights, has increased to 53,627 on average per day, up 27% from last month, Mr Kittipong said.
Domestic passengers went up by 10% or 29,691 on average per day, while international passengers jumped 56% or 23,936 on average per day.
Around 536 flights land and take off from the airport each day. Of them, 254 are domestic, up 10% from the corresponding period last month. The rest are international flight traffic, representing an increase of 3% from last month's figures.
Mr Kittipong said Suvarnabhumi airport will deploy more resources to restore the airport's working capacity to keep up with the increase in flight movements and traffic.
As the country's main international gateway, it needs to operate with speed and efficiency, he said, noting airports play an important role in accelerating economic recovery.
Suvarnabhumi has changed the way it is run to meet new public health protocols, Mr Kittipong added.
