Stranded passengers start to trickle out
Posted: Monday, December 01, 2008 3:15 PM
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Bangkok, Thailand
By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent
U-TAPAO, Thailand – It once was a forward operating base for the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War. About 100 miles southeast of Bangkok and renamed as U-Tapao International Airport, it now has become the capital city's only air link to the outside world – and a way out for the tens of thousands of tourists stranded in Thailand.
Used mostly by occasional charter flights, the airport only has one runway, one small terminal, and one X-ray machine. It has only four check-in counters, and one crane to lift luggage onto planes.
Yet they were hoping to get 50 flights out today – an impressive total, but only a fraction of the 700 flights a day that routinely used Bangkok's main airport, Suvarnabumi, before it was seized by anti-government protesters. (Airlines are also stepping up departures out of Thailand's other main international gateways, Chiang Mai and Phuket.)
This morning U-Tapao was chaos. "Organized chaos," according to John Landon from Colorado, who was making his way back home from a vacation on the resort island of Koh Samui. "The Thais have done really well to get this up and running."
Hundreds of tourists lined in the hot sun outside the tiny terminal building. "Don't worry," said a woman through a handheld loudspeaker, "Everybody will get on the plane. We won't go without you."
Departure information was scrawled on white boards, announcements shouted through a bullhorn.
The packed road by the terminal was lined with make-shift stalls selling food and drink. Water was handed out, and a local hotel had brought in a band and a group of dancing girls in an effort to lift the spirits of the beleaguered tourists, many of whom had been waiting for nearly a week to leave.
Buses jostled in the small parking area, from which tourists dragged their heavy bags towards the lines.
There were weekend reports of tourist anger, but on Monday the mood was one of resignation – and relief to be finally leaving.
For one group of young American students from a Hong Kong international school, it was all part of the adventure. "We missed two days of school," said one, with a sense of satisfaction.
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| Ian Williams / NBC News |
| Stranded tourists line up at the U-Tapao airport in Thailand in the hopes of catching a flight home. |
Another long day
Gene Fowler, from Chicago, had planned to be home for Thanksgiving, but instead had to spend the holiday in Bangkok, an inconvenience he took in stride. "I was here a few weeks after the last coup," he said. "And I was in Phuket two weeks after the tsunami. I don't let this sort of thing bother me."
For some, the day had begun with a 4 a.m. wake-up call at a Bangkok hotel. Some airlines are trying to organize check-in in the city, to reduce pressure at U-Tapao. Then it was a two to three hour drive to the air base, with the terminal inside a high security perimeter. For some, the wait at U-Tapao was up to six hours.
The road from Bangkok to U-Tapao passes Suvarnabumi airport. We visited on our way back. At the first check point, manned by the protesters' "security guards," there was a pile of police riot shields, seized in a brief clash at the weekend. The police had set up a small check-point of their own, but were driven away by protesters wielding iron bars, clubs and guns.
There has been no attempt to drive the protesters from the airport, and the protesters' militia – basically, an armed gang – is behaving with impunity, confident, it seems, that their backing from Bangkok's royalist elite puts them above the law.
Even in the unlikely event the protesters leave soon, it could be several days to clean up the airport and verify its compromised security systems, according to airport managers.
And in the meantime, the venerable U-Tapao is having its day amid the crowds and piles of baggage – and the dancing girls.
