Bangkok--24 Feb--Thai Airways
Thai Airways International Public Company Limited has implemented fuel management, improving utilization and increasing management of jet fuel, as part of the effort to reduce operational costs and increase profitability.
Flying Officer Norahuch Ployyai, THAI’s Executive Vice President, Operations Department, said that during the beginning of 2008, the company entered a fuel price crisis, when the fuel cost increased. The current world economic crisis and political situation in Thailand led to lower passenger travel demand. As a result, the company implemented cost control and cost reduction by putting fuel management into effect and increased its marketing efforts in order to increase corporate profitability.
Fuel costs are amongst the company’s greatest operational expenses. Through fuel management, flights are conducted in ways that reduce fuel cost in accordance to the company’s flight operations manual or by decreasing cargo weight to cut down on fuel consumption, while complying with commercial aviation regulations. Within 12 months (January-December 2008) of adhering to fuel management policy, fuel costs reduced significantly more than initially targeted. The cost savings of 35,497 tons of jet fuel meant THAI was able to reduce total expenses to be lower than originally budgeted by 955 million Baht.
During the period July-November 2008, the company was able to reduce total route expenses by 605.1 million Baht, which is more than initially estimated. Cost control and reduction of total route expenses included reduction of flight frequencies, number of flight crew and cabin crew, as well as the number of layover days spent at various destinations.
In addition to cost control management, the company has obtained more flight simulator customers who are flight crew from other air carriers as part of their flight training. Customer airlines include Sri Lanka Airlines, Qatar, Mahan Air, EGYPTAIR, Philippines Airlines, Biman Air, and Lufthansa. The agreement conditions include use of the facilities or cabin crew training on crew safety procedures at THAI’s Crew Center located in the Laksi area of Bangkok. Rental of the emergency training room at the Crew Center is currently provided to Lufthansa, All Nippon Airways, and Emirates Airlines. Furthermore, the company has plans to introduce the Cabin Service Trainer room that may be rented by customers for use in holding receptions or special events such as weddings, in order to increase revenue. During 2008, the company earned 105.8 million Baht profit from customers using the flight simulator, 5.46 million Baht from use of the emergency training room,1.5 million Baht from use of the Cabin Service Trainer room and cabin crew training, earning a total revenue of approximately 112.7 million Baht.
Press Release issued by M.L. Ajcharaporn Na Songkhla,
Director of Corporate Communications and Public Relations
Tuesday, 24 February 2009, at 1400 hrs.