Thai Airways International will land its newest aircraft an Airbus A340-600 at Suvarnabhumi Airport 29 September as the first plane that landed on the new airport and to technically declare the airport ready. Thailand’s Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and members of the Thai cabinet will be aboard the flight.
The airport itself will be operating and open for public in the middle of 2006.
The new airport will replace the old one Don Muang International Airport that first open in 1914.
The name Suvarnabhumi (pronounced soo-wan-na-poom) was chosen by King Bhumibol Adulyadej and means golden peninsula or golden land.
According to Airport-Technology.com the new airport is designed to handle 100 million passengers per year but the first stage of construction will only provide facilities for 30 million passengers annually.
And pperating as many as 76 flights per hour on two simultaneous runways it will have 51 aircraft stands and 69 remote parking bays for wide-bodied aircrafts and handle over 1.46 million tons of cargo annually.
Visit the official site of the new airport Suvarnabhumi Airport in English for more information.
