Thai Airways Lost Its CEO as Golden Week Guests Still Arrived

Thai Airways International suspended CEO Chai Eamsiri on Oct. 2 after Bangkok floods blocked ground staff from Suvarnabhumi Airport. About 320 millimeters of rain in three days from Sept. 24, as much as the city usually gets in September, left 5,600 bags stranded and the flag carrier cutting about 30 percent of its Bangkok departures.

Central hotels still took guests. Chinese airlines still flew them. The people who paid were the ground crew who could not reach Samut Prakan, and the executive who ran the airline that handles their bags.

Half the Ground Crew Never Made It to Work

Both of Bangkok’s main airports stayed open. The break was on the road in, not on the runway. Flooded streets in Samut Prakan, the province that wraps Suvarnabhumi, kept about half of Thai Airways’ staff from reporting, the airline said. Don Mueang, the low-cost hub, kept a cleaner operation.

Arriving passengers waited up to six hours for luggage. A Thai Airways flight carrying Thai athletes to the Asian Games left almost eight hours late. After flying in from Azerbaijan, passenger Emir Demiroez said he was still hunting for bags so he could connect to Malaysia.

Nobody knows anything. Nobody can help us. We can’t find our baggage.

Emir Demiroez, arriving passenger, Suvarnabhumi Airport

Chai, speaking while he was still chief executive, put numbers on the mess. Almost every flight over two days ran late. Fewer than 3 percent left on time, he said, because the airline could not hold its operating rate. It planned to cut about 30 Bangkok departures on Sept. 30, about 30 percent of the day’s book, and to keep a thinner schedule for at least three days. Cargo intake stopped from Sept. 30 through Oct. 6. The Royal Thai Air Force was sent in to move bags by hand.

Tourism Minister Surasak Phancharoenworakul did not treat that as weather. He said Thai Airways had shifted its own people onto ground-handling contracts for other airlines to avoid penalty fees, and that the choice hurt the country’s image.

We need to discuss how the management needs to work more proactively. If they don’t want to do the job, then resign.

Surasak Phancharoenworakul, tourism minister

Thai Airways, Thai AirAsia, and Thai Vietjet waived change fees. The flag carrier later extended date changes on eligible tickets through Suvarnabhumi until Oct. 11, and said registered bags would be sent on to homes and hotels. Airports of Thailand pointed passengers to Suvarnabhumi’s delayed-baggage tracking page on Level 2 at Gate 1.

Thai Airways passengers who arrived at Suvarnabhumi Airport between September 26 and 29, 2026, can check the status of delayed baggage using the airport’s baggage tracking system.

Passengers can scan the provided QR code or visit https://t.co/t4gl7ONBuY to see if their baggage… pic.twitter.com/y6adfg9fHk

— NBT WORLD (@NBTWORLDNews) September 30, 2026

THE WEEK THE BAGS STOPPED MOVING

1. Sept. 24: Heavy rain begins; about 320 mm falls over three days, near a full September total.
2. Sept. 26: Bangkok declares all 50 districts a disaster zone. Ground staff start missing shifts.
3. Sept. 27: Luggage waits hit six hours. An Asian Games charter leaves almost eight hours late.
4. Sept. 29: Thai Airways reports 5,600 stranded bags, cuts about 30 percent of Bangkok departures, and hears the minister tell it to resign if it will not do the work.
5. Oct. 1-2: The airline cancels 15 flights, then nine more, as it tries to match the schedule to the staff who can actually reach the airport.
6. Oct. 2: The board suspends Chai and names director Sumrid Sumneing acting chief executive.

Interior Ministry figures put the wider human cost higher than a delayed carousel. At least 23 people had died in the rains since Sept. 16, four of them in Bangkok, and the floods had reached 42 provinces. City governor Chadchart Sittipunt said water should leave major roads within two days and other inundated areas within a week.

Chinese Airlines Flew the Holiday Thai Airways Could Not

The Tourism Authority of Thailand had already sold Golden Week as a China test. Governor Thapanee Kiatphaibool set the extended window, from Sept. 25 to Oct. 7, at 250,000 Chinese visitors and 11.5 billion baht in spending, up 24 percent and 37 percent from a year earlier. For the official National Day week of Oct. 1 to 7 alone, TAT put arrivals at about 137,000 and spending at about 4.2 billion baht.

Those guests were not, in the main, sitting in a Thai Airways cabin. Lerdchai Wangtrakoondee, director of TAT’s Shanghai office, said most Chinese visitors buy Chinese airlines because the fares are lower and the timetables are wider than the national carrier’s. The Suvarnabhumi pile-up, he said, did not change their decision to come. It was more likely to hit Thais flying THAI to Shanghai.

Most Chinese visitors travel on Chinese airlines because their fares are generally lower and they offer a wider choice of flight schedules than Thailand’s national carrier.

Lerdchai Wangtrakoondee, director, TAT Shanghai Office

Yolrawee Sittichai, who runs TAT’s Beijing office, said Chinese tour operators had confirmed that customers were still travelling. TAT’s own count for Wednesday, Sept. 30, the eve of National Day, was more than 22,000 Chinese arrivals, almost double a normal day of more than 10,000. Chinese arrivals for the year were up 15 percent, the agency said.

Direct flights already tied Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Hangzhou, and Chongqing to Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Phuket, and Udon Thani. Six new China-Thailand routes were due across September and October. The flag carrier’s ground crisis sat beside that extra metal, not on top of it.

The 5,400 Room Nights That Did Get Cancelled

Hotel owners spent the first wet days saying the rooms were fine. Thai Hotels Association members counted about 20 cancellations a day per property, a pace president Thienprasit Chaiyapatranun called normal. Minor Hotels said its Bangkok houses ran as usual. Thienprasit later put the likely occupancy hit for September and October at less than 10 percent from a year earlier, and said the flooded share of the capital was about 30 to 40 percent, a smaller map than 2011.

A later THA tally was less calm, and it was not only a Bangkok number. More than 5,400 room nights were cancelled or postponed nationwide between Sept. 27 and Oct. 4. Bangkok itself dropped 1,983 nights between Sept. 27 and 29. Chon Buri, the Pattaya coast that sells itself as a Bangkok add-on, dropped 875 in the same three days. Rayong and Chanthaburi, further east, reported 651 and 353 nights off for Sept. 28 to Oct. 4. Wattharapong Khunpleum, who chairs THA’s eastern chapter, said hotels in Chon Buri, Rayong, and Chanthaburi had seen about half their rooms cancelled since the previous week, for tour groups and leisure guests alike.

WHERE THE BOOKINGS MOVED

The Phuket 78 percent is a booking figure from Trip.com Group, not a count of people who landed after the rain, and it was already in the market before the city flooded. It is a different 78 percent from Minor Hotels’ earlier claim that Chinese room nights across its Thailand portfolio were 78 percent ahead of last year. Both point the same way. Chinese demand was already spreading to islands and the north. Bangkok’s flood did not create that split. It made the east, which still sells itself as a capital excursion, pay for a blocked transfer.

Why TAT Still Counted 22,000 Chinese Arrivals

TAT had warned, before National Day, that more rain on Sept. 29 and 30 could cut arrivals from western China by 15 to 20 percent against the 250,000-person target. Its Chengdu office also sketched a milder base case, a 5 to 10 percent slip if the water eased by Sept. 30. Those were forecasts, not results. By Oct. 1 the same agency was telling Chinese travellers that the Grand Palace, Wat Pho, and Wat Arun were open, and that the 22,000 people who entered on Sept. 30 were still coming.

GOLDEN WEEK AGAINST THE YEAR

• The 13-day target: TAT wants 250,000 Chinese arrivals from Sept. 25 to Oct. 7, with 11.5 billion baht in spending.
• The official week: Oct. 1 to 7 is forecast at about 137,000 arrivals and 4.2 billion baht.
• The booking lead: Thapanee cited October bookings to Thailand up 16% and flight searches from China up 24 percent, figures TAT also ties to ForwardKeys.
• The year underneath: Foreign arrivals reached 22,666,429 from Jan. 1 to Sept. 26, down 3.65 percent from 2025. China led with 3,822,928.

The week of Sept. 20 to 26, which covered Mid-Autumn travel and the first days of rain, already showed China moving. The Tourism Ministry counted 482,751 foreign arrivals that week, up 4 percent, with 94,343 from China, up 42.62 percent. Malaysia, India, Russia, and South Korea filled out the top five for the year.

On Oct. 3, Tongcheng Travel ranked Bangkok first among destinations outside mainland China for the Oct. 1 to 7 holiday. Airlines had added about 20 percent more flights from China to Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Laos. Japan’s slide on Chinese lists, tied to tension between Beijing and Tokyo, is doing some of the work that TAT’s confidence campaign was meant to do. The flood still left a transfer problem. It did not knock the capital off the Chinese holiday map.

A 165 Billion Baht Canal Got Approved Mid-Flood

Rangsit University economist Aat Pisanwanich put the commercial bill in the same week the bags piled up. His moderate case for Sept. 24 to 27 ran to 25.345 billion baht nationwide, with Bangkok taking 10.586 billion baht ($315 million), about 42 percent of the total. He spread a 0.55 percent dent to third-quarter GDP, including 0.23 percent on Bangkok. The east took 5.5208 billion baht and the central region 4.401 billion. Factories, he and the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce both noted, were not under water the way they were in 2011.

Cabinet still wrote two cheques. Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said ministers approved more than 4 billion baht ($119 million) in flood aid and a 160 billion baht ($4.8 billion) drainage project that will take eight years, aimed at the central plain, Bangkok, and the ring of provinces around it. On Sept. 29 they also approved a 165 billion baht Chainat-Pasak-Gulf of Thailand diversion canal, scheduled for 2027 to 2034.

That canal is a 2011 leftover. After the last great flood, Yingluck Shinawatra’s government authorised up to 350 billion baht in emergency borrowing for a national water system. Later cabinets recast the work as nine Chao Phraya plans. The cheap items got built. The large ones did not.

WHAT 2011 STILL HAS NOT BUILT

• The four big plans: Lower-eastern irrigation (95 billion baht, approved Sept. 15, 2026), the 165 billion baht Chainat-Pasak canal, a 169.216 billion baht Third Ring Road drainage canal still in study, and 51 billion baht of western irrigation with design done and no construction.
• Combined stall: Those four items exceed 480 billion baht and remain newly approved, under study, or waiting to start.
• Bang Ban-Bang Sai: A 25.4 billion baht diversion canal that began in 2019 has been stretched from eight years to 12, now due in 2030, on land-acquisition delays.
• What did finish: Smaller drainage, 13 of 14 community flood-protection sites, and farm retention rules.

A court-ordered round of public hearings stopped an earlier five-route floodway that was supposed to cut Chao Phraya basin flooding by more than half. Fifteen years on, a three-day rain still severs the commute that Thai Airways needs to run Suvarnabhumi.

The Board Suspended Chai Eamsiri on Oct. 2

Chai joined the carrier in 1985, rose through finance, and took the chief executive’s job on Feb. 1, 2023, after the airline had come out of rehabilitation. On Sept. 24, the first wet day, he was in Bangkok accepting a TTG Travel Hall of Fame honour for the company. Eight days later the non-executive directors met without him, the only executive on the board, and took the job away.

He told reporters the board had fired him on the spot and had not explained why. “They want to see if there are gaps … mistakes in the work carried out,” he said. A stock-exchange filing that evening called the move a suspension pending a fact-finding review of crisis procedures, and named Sumrid Sumneing, a director on the executive committee, as acting chief executive. Chai remains a director. Board chairman Lavaron Sangsnit, the Finance Ministry permanent secretary, ran the meeting.

They didn’t give a reason. They want to see if there are gaps … mistakes in the work carried out.

Chai Eamsiri, after the Oct. 2 board meeting

The airline said it would put a full passenger schedule back on from Oct. 3. Cargo stays closed through Oct. 6. TAT’s Golden Week window runs through Oct. 7, with the meteorological office warning of more heavy rain from Oct. 4. The rooms in central Bangkok are still for sale. The bags that made the minister tell a national carrier to resign are the ones that cost it a chief executive.