Domestic flights in Thailand: who runs each airport, what is inside the fare, and what you are owed.

Four operators, not one: who actually runs the airport you are flying from

Almost every guide to flying inside Thailand talks about “AOT airports” as though that covered the country. It covers six of them. Thailand’s own aeronautical information publication — the aerodrome availability section that CAAT maintains for pilots, which is the authoritative register rather than a tourist list — splits the national network across four separate operators. Which one owns your departure airport determines the charge inside your fare, the standard of the terminal, and who you escalate a complaint to.

Two things follow that are worth holding on to. Krabi is not an AOT airport — nor is Surat Thani, Udon Thani, Khon Kaen or Hua Hin. And Samui is owned by an airline, which is why it is the only major Thai destination where one carrier controls both the runway and the schedule, and why it prices unlike anywhere else in the country. Being listed in the register is not the same as having a scheduled airline: several of the 29 — Mae Sariang, Pai, Tak and Phetchabun among them — are aerodromes rather than places you can currently buy a ticket to, and we have not verified the live schedule at any individual field.

For the terminal-by-terminal detail at the big six — which concourse, which ground transport, what it costs to reach the city — see the Thailand airport guide.

The airport charge inside your fare, and the two charges that are not on it

Thailand’s passenger service charge is collected inside the ticket price rather than at a desk, so most passengers never see it broken out. It is set per operator, not nationally, and the spread on a domestic sector is eightfold.

Then there are the two charges people keep applying to domestic tickets by mistake. The 1,120-baht figure is international only: AOT’s increase from 730 baht took effect on 19 June 2026 at 1700 UTC, tickets issued before it are not affected, and the domestic charge was left alone at 130. And CAAT’s new 25-baht entry-or-exit fee, effective 1 February 2026, is levied per passenger per trip on people entering or leaving the Kingdom — so a Bangkok to Khon Kaen sector does not carry it either.

The practical version: the same 25-kilogram bag flown out of Udon Thani and out of Samui carries a 350-baht difference in airport charge before any airline has quoted you a fare. If you are choosing a base and you fly often, that is a line in the budget — and one reason to compare Thai cities on their airport as well as their rent.

What each airline actually includes on a domestic ticket

The received wisdom is that Thailand’s budget carriers are cabin-bag-only and the full-service ones include a bag. That is wrong in both directions, and the difference is worth more than the fare gap on a lot of routes. Every figure below is from the carrier’s own published allowance.

Read that table sideways and the cheap fare stops being obviously cheap. A Nok X-tra ticket with 15 kg in it competes directly with an AirAsia fare plus 728 baht of bag. And a single checked bag may not exceed 32 kg at a Thai airport under an AOT directive, whatever allowance you have bought — over that it has to be repacked at the counter.

If a guide still lists Thai Smile, it is out of date. Thai Smile ceased flight operations on 31 December 2023; its twenty Airbus A320s and nine domestic routes were absorbed into Thai Airways and now fly under TG codes.

Bangkok has two airports, and the shuttle between them is not a taxi service

Suvarnabhumi (BKK) sits east of the city and is home to Thai Airways and Bangkok Airways; Don Mueang (DMK) sits north and is where the low-cost carriers are based. They are on opposite sides of Bangkok with no direct rail link between them, and crossing in traffic can take well over an hour.

There is a free AOT shuttle, and it is worth knowing its actual rules rather than the version that circulates second-hand. Per the Thai government’s own portal, it is for transit or transfer passengers only: staff check a boarding pass for the connecting flight plus a passport or ID card. It boards at Don Mueang Terminal 1, first floor, Gate 6 and at Suvarnabhumi’s passenger terminal, second floor, Gate 3, runs roughly hourly between about 05:00 and midnight, and the portal puts the run at one to two hours. It is not available to somebody who merely wants a lift across town, and it does not turn two separately booked tickets into a protected connection — if the first flight is late, nobody owes you the second one.

For everything else about getting to either airport, see the Bangkok airport transfer guide, Grab and ride-hailing, and, if the journey is short enough to stay on the ground, trains and rail travel or the river boats. Arriving from abroad first? The Thailand Digital Arrival Card is a separate requirement and is free.

What you are legally owed when a domestic flight goes wrong

This is the part of Thai domestic flying that almost nobody claims, and it is not a goodwill policy — it is law. Regulation of the Civil Aviation Board No. 101, given on 22 October 2024 by Suriya Jungrungreangkit as Chairman of the Civil Aviation Board and in force since 20 May 2025, sets what a carrier must do on a scheduled flight. On a domestic sector:

• Delay over 2 hours — food and drink, or vouchers for them, and free means of communication.
• Delay over 3 hours — the above, plus your choice of a full refund of the fare and other fees or re-routing to the destination on your ticket.
• Delay over 5 hours — the above, plus 1,200 baht, or a credit shell or travel voucher of equal value, provided immediately.
• Cancellation or denied boarding — 1,500 baht immediately, plus care, plus accommodation where the disruption runs past a day.
• Refund timing — 14 days for a cash payment, 45 days for a credit card, from receipt of your completed reimbursement form.

The escape hatch is narrow and specific: the airline is excused by an extraordinary circumstance, which the regulation defines as an external event that was unforeseeable and unavoidable even after the carrier took all reasonable measures to prevent it. Ordinary operational mess is not that. If the compensation is not paid as prescribed, CAAT takes complaints at complaint.caat.or.th.

Practical habit worth forming: when a domestic delay passes the two-hour mark, note the time, keep the boarding pass, and ask at the gate rather than in the app. The entitlement is per-passenger and immediate, and the higher bands are the ones staff most often have to be asked for.

What we could not confirm

Everything above is sourced. These are the things we went looking for and did not get to an official answer on, recorded here rather than papered over.

• The per-kilometre ceiling on domestic fares. Thailand does regulate the maximum a carrier may charge on a domestic route, set by distance. The figures reported in the Thai press are 9.40 baht per kilometre for a low-cost carrier and 13 baht per kilometre for a full-service one, and a 2022 worked example put the Bangkok–Betong ceiling at 8,836 and 12,220 baht respectively — arithmetically consistent with those rates over 940 km. We could not reach a CAAT publication stating the rates currently in force, and CAAT’s own fees section does not carry them, so we do not print them as current.
• Thai Vietjet’s baggage allowance. The carrier’s Thai site and its own news pages render client-side and returned no readable content to us, so no Vietjet allowance is stated on this page. Check it in the booking flow.
• Thai Lion Air’s cabin baggage limit. Its baggage page gives the domestic checked allowance clearly but the copy we read did not state a cabin weight or dimension.
• The secondary rows of Thai AirAsia’s fee schedule. The pre-purchase checked-baggage row extracted identically on two reads and is printed. The rows beneath it — excess per kilogram, gate bag, express bag — did not, so they are left out rather than guessed.
• Which of the 29 Department of Airports aerodromes have scheduled service. The AIP lists them as DOA aerodromes; that is a different question from whether an airline sells a seat there this month, and we did not verify any individual field’s current schedule.
• The AOT shuttle’s current timetable. The gates, hours and eligibility above come from the government portal’s description; we did not read a live AOT timetable, so treat the hourly frequency as indicative and confirm at the counter.
• Route-by-route fares and flight times are deliberately absent. Timetables and prices move weekly, no single official schedule covers all six carriers, and a number printed here would be wrong within a month. Price the route live, then book on the airline’s own site.

Booking habits that survive all of the above

Frequently asked