Siam General Aviation (Bangkok Suvarnabhumi) has offered itself up for sale to Thai AirAsia (FD, Bangkok Don Mueang) after a Nok Air (DD, Bangkok Don Mueang) board meeting resolved to end a four-year long alliance with the carrier. The Bangkok Post reports that Nok Air management refused to consider any buyout of SGA, which operates Nok Mini services, on the grounds that the proposal was not viable and, with a THB200million (USD6.15million), "excessive".
Nok informed SGA of its intention to terminate wet-lease services operated on secondary routes for Nok Air with effect from March 30. Thai AirAsia, while still considering an investment in SGA, has yet to make a firm decision on the matter.
The move to offload SGA comes at time when its founder, Jain Charnnarong, is suffering from unspecified health complications leading other SGA minority shareholders to call for the carrier's exit from the scheduled and charter air business.
Nok Air CEO Patee Sarasin remained unfazed by the development noting that his airline would assume Nok Mini's domestic Thai routes using a combination of its two ATR72s and some B737-800s.
"Frankly, it's not worth paying the kind of money SGA asked for, and it makes more business sense to operate those secondary routes," he said.
The arrival in July of the airline's first of four Dash 8-400s on order from Bombardier Aerospace (BBA, Montréal Trudeau) is expected to bolster its local operations.
