BKK...Beautiful Airport to Fly Into. On foreign Carriers..

With tourists flocking to Thailand in record numbers this year—and BKK being the world’s second-most visited city after LHR—the nation’s aviation industry should be thriving. Instead, it’s getting downgraded—over safety concerns.
Flagship carrier Thai Airways serves 32 nations, 74 airports, and 19.1 million passengers a year, yet Thailand’s aviation industry “does not comply with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) safety standards,” wrote the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in a statement released this week (Dec. 1), “and has been assigned a Category 2 rating based on a reassessment of the country’s civil aviation authority.”
Previously Thailand had the FAA’s top rating, Category 1. It will now It will now join Bangladesh, Ghana, Indonesia, and three other nations in the bottom rating, Category 2 (.xls file). The new rating, which could last for years, means there are serious problems, says the FAA:

The country either lacks laws or regulations necessary to oversee air carriers in accordance with minimum international standards, or its civil aviation authority—a body equivalent to the FAA for aviation safety matters—is deficient in one or more areas, such as technical expertise, trained personnel, record-keeping, or inspection procedures.

This means Thai carriers can’t launch new services to the US, though existing flights could continue. It is something of a moot point: Among the nation’s carriers, only Thai Airways has the long-haul aircraft capable of offering a trans-Pacific service to the US, and in October it axed its last US flight (to Los Angeles) due to intense competition.

But the ruling will likely produce knock-on effects that will be felt throughout Thailand’s already-weakened economy. The FAA’s influence is felt far outside of the US, and Thailand’s airline industry is heavily dependent on foreign travelers.