Expansion plan for Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport

The government of Thailand has announced a plan for a 62 billion baht (€1.5 billion) expansion of Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport. The airport will have a new, third runway that will enable to deal with increased traffic.

Suvarnabhumi has the capacity to handle about 45 million passengers a year, but actually handled around 50 million last year. Though in recent months traffic has dropped due to the political unrest in Thailand, the government expects that the trend towards growing numbers of visitors will soon pick up again.

Airports of Thailand, the country's largest airport operator, said the expansion of Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport over the next five years will increase capacity at the airport to 80 million a year by 2017.

Reports say that Thailand will also build another three provincial airports.