New Direct Flights Link Phuket to Vietnam and Bangkok to Dubai

Airports of Thailand has been working with foreign carriers to add nonstop links that did not exist before, and two of those routes are now up and running. Vietnam Airlines opened a Ho Chi Minh City-Phuket service on July 2, flying an Airbus A321 four times a week and adding roughly 39,500 seats a year between the two cities, aimed at Vietnam’s fast-growing outbound market to Thailand. Separately, flydubai’s Dubai-Don Mueang route, itself only a year or so old, has stepped up from one flight a day to two as of September 15, taking total Dubai-Thailand capacity to 28 flights a week.

Neither route needs a Bangkok stopover for Vietnamese visitors heading straight to Phuket, and the flydubai increase gives Gulf travellers more schedule choice into Bangkok’s secondary airport heading into the year-end high season. Both are genuinely new or expanded capacity rather than restored pre-pandemic schedules, so they are worth checking for anyone booking flights between these city pairs this winter.