1.) What are the major rival airlines of Thai Airways, why?
-> The main target passengers of Thai airline are foreigners so that the major rivals of Thai airways are those airlines from middle-east such as Emirate Airlines, Qatar Airways, Etihad Airways.
However, to compete with those rival airlines are quite hard because from oil trading, they have the cost of operating equals to zero. The zero cost makes them has no interest to pay for. On the other hand, Thai airways need to borrow the money to buy a plane. The fraction of plane buying between those rival airlines and Thai airways is 10 planes per 1 plane.
Domestic low-cost airlines, however, are not the main competitor of Thai airways. Because Thai airways services the customers by using 'Full-service program' which is included with all services customers could have, but those low-cost airlines emphasize only on the price of the ticket, the extra services are excluded from the ticket price.
2.) What do you think is the main factor that causes a money problem of Thai airways?
-> The business policy and plan, as they were not precise enough in the long-run. So that when time goes by, the old business policy or plan has no use anymore. For example, when they face the crisis, cabin factor decreased causing them less revenue. The plan to pay for planes’ monthly installment got stuck. Therefore, the Ministry of Finance needed to intervene and foster them by providing sources of low-interest loanable funds.
5.) What are the strategies of Thai Airways?
-> The management of the company is strengthened lately. For the strategy, they promote more discount and extra services. For example, in the past, the cost of going to Japan is over 30,000 baht. But nowadays there’re a lot of low-cost airlines such as Lion Air, AsiaX that can provide a cheaper tickets, but the extra services like food, blanket or luggage loading are not included. So, Thai airways sets a reasonable price which is included by all of those extra services.