Suvarnabhumi airport after the clampdown and cleanup

After a few visits to Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport in the past week, both as a traveller and to pick up visitors, it appears to me that the moves by the government to stop the harassment of arriving passengers by touts has been largely successful.

Also, the new office of the Ratchathewa police station adjoining the Tourist Police Office in the arrivals hall near Door 3 looks resplendent and was fully-staffed each time I passed by. The office was opened last month following complaints of extortion of apparent duty-free shoplifters and innocent shoppers who were taken off-site where outrageous demands for cash were made to secure their departure from Thailand.

I was asked a couple of times outside of the airport building on the fourth floor if I wanted a taxi when I was heading to pick up a taxi that had just deposited departing passengers, but at no stage was I approached inside the terminal building. This was certainly a far cry from the ‘old days’ when arriving passengers were surrounded and harangued by unlicensed taxi drivers, tour operators and limousine services. All in all, arrival now is a very orderly affair.

I notice that the Bangkok Post’s reporter Amornrat Mahittirook, the person who a few weeks ago ‘broke’ the uncorroborated story of the alleged attempt by an authorized airport taxi driver to over- power a woman in his cab by some kind of gas, is writing a series on the government’s airport crackdown. As is often the case in news stories in Thailand, numbers do not seem to matter. On Sunday September 6 Khun Amornrat informed readers that

…more than 600 people had been caught at the airport in the past two months for various offences.

In the past two months, 395 unlicensed taxi drivers and 210 illegal our guides who exploited travellers…have been arrested…, the AoT (Airports of Thailand – the body responsible for the airport’s administration) reported to cabinet last week.

In today’s Post (September 9), the numbers have doubled and we learn from Khun Amnorat that

A special security team at Suvarnabhumi airport has arrested 750 unlicensed taxi and limousine drivers and 405 illegal tour guides in the space of just one month, officials say.

Whatever the numbers, it seems from my own observations, that the crackdown is having a positive effect. Also, despite Khun Amnorat’s observations, taxis with arriving passengers are are not allowed to stand for more than a couple of minutes, and their area for setting down and standing is severely restricted.

Perhaps now the government can move also to dissuade the AoT from actively pushing its own over-priced limousine service on arriving passengers. Also, the AoT should be forced to erect signs so that all visitors to the airport can find and avail themselves of excellent Thai food-court-priced dining, hidden away in a corner of the lower-ground floor, rather than having to eat at the clearly sign-posted and expensive food outlets near the departures area.