Thai News

In compliance with the international civil aviation standard regarding the use of standard passenger and baggage weights for weight & balance calculation purposes, the conducting of a standard weights survey is essential to the safety and efficiency of a flight in determining that the actual weight does not exceed the maximum take-off weight limitation. From 15 September to 31 October 2023, we would like to collect the information by weighing passenger including carry-on baggage at the boarding gate.

Therefore, we assure that the information will be kept confidential and will be used to update standard passenger and baggage weights information.

People are always banging away at the importance of buying accident and illness travel insurance, but the reality is that most travel insurance doesn't end up covering life-saving operations or expensive repatriation.

The Association of British Insurers says that 17% of all overseas claims are rejected, mostly for lack of documentation, and adds that the average payout for successful claims is just over £1,000. In other words, insurers are mainly paying out on small issues such as lost luggage or booking cancellations rather than medical emergencies. The award-winning blog Travelbunny stresses that most failures come down to the small print in the policies which is there to protect the funds of the insurance companies rather than you.

The reasons for failed insurance policies are sometimes specified in crowdfunding entreaties. In 10 detailed traffic accidents, five injured Brits were refused cover because they were not wearing a crash helmet, two were relying on British driving licences (only international or Thai-issued are lawful here), two were participating in hazardous sports and one had had been out of the UK for more than 30 days.

Other small print get outs insurers in a big claim will want difficult to obtain evidence there was no alcohol or substance abuse. The warning clauses most used in the small print are must take reasonable care or must observe national laws. For example, it is technically compulsory in Thailand for back seat car passengers to wear safety belts which, of course, creates issues when they have not been fitted.

Thailand has generally offered visitors from western countries a visa free stay of 30 days. As a promotion of tourism to help post-covid recovery, Thailand temporarily offered a 45 day entry stamp. But now this promotion as ended and vistors are back to a 30 day entry stamp.

The 30 day entry can still be extended another 30 days (with a visit to an immigration office in the days before your arrival status runs out, along with a passport photo and 1,900 baht).

The Thai cabinet has approved the collection of a landing tax, ranging from 150-300 baht, to be collected from all foreign tourists visiting Thailand, tentatively from June 1st.

The landing tax for foreign tourists arriving by land and sea will be 150 baht per head and 300 baht for arrivals by air.

Tourism and Sports Minister Pipat Ratchakitprakarn explained that the landing tax will be used for domestic tourism development and for insurance coverage for tourists while they are in Thailand.

Thailand has taken a number of knee jerk responses to China's re-opening of its boarders to foreign travel even though there is a significant surge in covid cases in China.

Thailand is desperate to see the return of Chinese tourists and is also desperate to keep in China's good books. So instead of imposing border restrictions on Chinese visitors bring in covid, Thailand decided to avoid seeming to discriminate against Chinese visitors by applying covid based restrictions to all foreign inbound travellers.

And ludicrously Thailand decided to impose restrictions with hardly any advance notice. On Saturday Thailand announced that it would bar all incoming travellers that had not received a full dose of covid vaccination (typically 2 shots). It sent round a communication to all airlines to stop unvaccinated people from boarding flights arriving from Monday.

This lead to significant holiday cancellations, particularly from Russia, where vaccination coverage is low. Thai hoteliers loudly protested their loss of trade and seem to have persuaded Thai authorities to change their stance. So on Sunday Thailand changes its rules again and said unvaccinated people could board flights but would be tested on arrival.

Of course Thailand has not specified how such testing would take place, and what are the nightmare consequences should a traveller test positive for covid.

No doubt there will be further developments to follow.

Update: Total policy failure

10th January 2023. See article from thepattayanews.com

Thai Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul stated on January 9th, 2023 that a controversial rule to require proof of documentation of Covid vaccination to fly to Thailand will be canceled.

 

Offsite Comment: Nobody Won After the Recent Debacle

10th January 2023. See article from thepattayanews.com