ch-aviation interview: Patee Sarasin, Vice Chairman Nok Air
ch-aviation CEO Thomas Jaeger had a chat with Patee Sarasin, Vice Chairman of Nok Air. Read our exclusive interview to find out about how the Thai carrier has overcome a tough few years and its plans to use China on its road to recovery.
Learn about Nok Air on ch-aviation:
I’ll start with a personal question, if you don’t mind. Obviously, you’re a big musician, as well, in Thailand.
Oh, not that big!
But you’re quite famous for doing that as well. And recently you performed on The Mask Singer, and you were disguised as an eagle. It’s a show where people don’t know who is singing. Why did you pick an eagle? Did you want to show that Nok Air is attacking again after some difficult years?
No, no. It was designed for me already to be the eagle. I guess what happened was the show took one of our drinking bottles from the plane, which has that eagle on it. So they chose that particular mask to be the key element.
But if you look at recently, you were one of the most profitable airlines in the world, and then had some rough years. What would you say was the key factor? Was it that you had some pilot issues? Or was it the CAA downgrade at exactly the wrong time when NokScoot started? Or was it irrational competition coming into the market? What was the key factor?
All three. The competition came in in such a massive way. And then they started a complete price war on the domestic market. They were willing to lose money on it. And therefore what happens with the overcapacity coming into the market, they start dumping prices, so that really hurt us quite a bit. That’s number one.
Number two, yes, with NokScoot unable to fly to Japan and Korea, probably two or three days after we launched, that became the second really big issue.
And then the third part was an inability to expand across the region. That was our plan, to go across South East Asia, but it was hampered by the red flag from ICAO. So that definitely was truly an issue, as well.
