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UBON RATCHATHANI (Thailand) – My taxi passed Friday (May 1) through the dark and deserted international terminal of Bangkok’s Don Mueang airport to stop at a slowly coming home terminal.
Domestic flights are restarted in the city even when incoming international commercial flights remain prohibited.
With the decline in new Covid-19 infections in Thailand, airlines such as Thai Lion Air and Thai AirAsia fly back to provinces such as Chiang Mai, Surat Thani and Khon Kaen starting on Friday.
Both airlines had landed their fleets after Thailand declared a state of emergency in late March.
For someone overly familiar with the squalls of tourists in Don Mueang, his registration room was extremely serene.
A handful of passengers crawled along each queue according to the spaced markers glued to the floor, lost in thought and silenced by their masks.
It took me only five minutes to check in a suitcase for my AirAsia flight to the northeast province of Ubon Ratchathani.
The new aviation rules will depress passenger numbers for now.
The Thai Civil Aviation Authority requires carriers to maintain at least one empty seat among passengers and to enforce social distancing when boarding, disembarking, and even queuing to go to the bathroom.
Passengers must wear face masks at all times and cannot eat or drink on board. The cabin crew must wear surgical masks and gloves at all times.
Protective gear was no problem for people who have spent the past few months absorbing increasingly sinister news about the Covid-19 virus.
On Friday, some people showed up in Don Mueang with tear gas masks and face shields, and put alcohol gel on their knees as if they were moisturizers.
While waiting for the flight, a mother took her restless son to a far corner for breakfast.
A man with colds was pacing nervously down the hall, trying to locate the safest place to blow his nose.
It was only after boarding the plane that I noticed that no one, not the check-in staff, the security officer, or the gate staff, had ever asked me to remove my N95 mask to determine my identity. .
I looked around hoping to see the cabin crew dressed in the red hooded protective jumpsuit designed by Filipino designer Puey Quinones presented with great fanfare by AirAsia last week.
Unfortunately, attendees on this hour-long flight were dressed in their normal black and red uniforms, which they covered in a disposable plastic jumpsuit after takeoff.
A delegate announced that food and drink were strictly prohibited during the flight.
But the dry air tickled my throat and made me cough, alarming the woman in front so much that she changed seats. Punished, I took some illicit sips of water.
Before the pandemic, this flight would have been filled with travelers drawn to the cultural and natural gems of Ubon Ratchathani and neighboring Laos.
Now, with the land border closed and panic over Covid-19, the Airbus A-320 was barely a third full. My traveling companions seemed to be mostly Thai people heading home.
Kanjana Arkkachat, a Bangkok-based lawyer, was instructed by her employer to work remotely. He decided to stay with his elderly parents in Sisaket province with Ubon Ratchathani.
“It will be really bad if someone is sick on the bus trip to Sisaket, which lasts eight hours or more,” he reasoned. “A one-hour plane ride is less risky.”
Ms. Lalitpat Pakdeeto was on her way to meet her parents in Yasothon province, near Ubon Ratchathani. Dismissed from her job in Bangkok as a hotel housekeeper, she paid 3,000 baht (S $ 131), about three times the normal price, for this one-way plane ticket, not knowing when she will return. “The situation may be improving, but we still don’t have tourists,” he said.
The peaceful flight ended on a messy note at Ubon Ratchathani airport when the disembarking passengers were driven to a series of checkpoints and made to download a mobile app to send pictures of their identity documents and other personal details.
The AOT Airports app has been described in the Google Play app store as “buggy”, insecure, and too intrusive in its permission settings, but authorities say the logged information is necessary for contact tracing.
Ubon Ratchathani has been without a new Covid-19 infection for more than two weeks.
Some 5,000 people remain in home quarantine. The resumption of many flights to the province is a good sign that its containment measures are working, says provincial governor Sarit Witoon.
Thailand, starting May 3, will relax the rules to allow the reopening of parks, small restaurants, flea markets and beauty salons.
Still, the question is when can everyone resume business.
For Ubon Ratchathani, Sarit believes it will take at least two months.
“If only one new case of infection is found, it may not take just two months. It could take us a year,” he said.
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