One-Two-GO Airlines remains grounded until October

The controversial Thai low-cost carrier One-Two-Go Airlines will remain grounded until at least October reports Phuket Gazette.



Udom Tantiprasongchai, founder and chairman of One-Two-Go, admitted that the resumption of services would honestly not happen this month and would come in October at the earliest.

One-Two-Go initially grounded its fleet of eight McDonnell Douglas MD-80 jet aircrafts citing financial conditions and the need to restructure.

It was subsequently grounded by the Thailand Department Of Civil Aviation (DCA) for allegedly breaching safety regulations, having a lack of proper airline management and for falsification of documents by some pilots who had misrepresented their credentials.

The government suspension, to 21 August 2008, was subsequently extended by the DCA to 20 September 2008.

Recent political unrest, including the two-day closure of Phuket International Airport (PIA) by anti-government protesters, and a subsequent drop in demand were among the reasons the airline is not yet ready to resume flights to Phuket, said Udom.

The following notice is displayed when I paid an unofficial visit to the official website of One Two Go:

September, 12, 2008

Dear Valued Passengers

Due to the recent uncertainty of Thai political situation, please be informed that One Two Go scheduled services for all domestic destinations will be resumed at later date than originally plan on 15th September, 2008.

Thank you for your kind understanding

Regards,
One-Two-Go Airlines.

It is common in Thailand to find Tinglish (Thai style English) text appear on commercials, t-shirts, and various other places, as you can see in the notice above. Grammatical errors are just customary in Thailand.

I wonder, why on runway earth did they originally choose 15th September 2008 as a date for resuming their operations after being grounded, as that would have been just a day before the first anniversary of the deadly One Two Go Phuket plane crash that killed more than 80 passengers on 16 September 2007.

Thousands of people lost their loves ones on that day, and these people would be reminded again of that tragedy on the first anniversary of the incident; it was unwise of One 2 Go to originally plan to resume operations on that day.