This is the hip ride out to the stix in Thailand. It's an Aerospetiale ATR-72, a Brazilian plane. This one is a Bangkok Airways plane, "The Boutique Airline of Thailand." Also the smart airline of Thailand. Most of the short-hail airlines fly jets, small Airbus planes, some smaller. The jets are expensive to run, and many of these flights are not full, not by any means.
This Aerospetiale plane is old school, and before the financial crisis it was decidedly un-hip. It's cheap to fly, however, and it's advantages have recently become dynamically obvious. Bangkok Airways is the only short-haul airline still making money, and the other guys are switching to this plane, sometimes leased from Bangkok Air.
This plane, by the way, is a good ride. It's powerful, with a riveting fourteen second take off run, and it's fast in the air, 500 mph or thereabouts. It's a solid, comfortable flyer with a nice, gentle touchdown.
It's a new-old world!
2 comments:
That's flying. I fly a lot on Bombardier's version of that plane for so-called "commuter" flights. It's actually more comfortable, albeit a tad more noisy, with more legroom, than those regional jets that all of the airlines are now using. I don't know how the airlines can get away with as long as 3 hour flights in those little jets. By the end of the trip, you feel like you've been sitting on a wooden bench. And for that luxury, the airfare is the same as riding on full-sized jet.
The heck with this local color story... I want the poop on what happened to David Carradine in that Hotel room... show us the pictures of his naked, trussed-up body in the closet that ran in the local Bangkok papers!
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