Review of Thai Airways flight from Bangkok to Stockholm in Economy

Intro

Hello,

Given that my wife and me usually plan a separate trip every year, I decided to go ahead to my usual destination down in Southeast Asia, while my wife fancied a trip to the Mediterranean for herself. As competition becomes fiercer by the year down to Thailand from Europe, it opens a lot of possibilities and cheap prices.

Given that there are plentiful of direct flights to Bangkok from Amsterdam both flown by KLM & EVA Air, you also have plentiful of one stop connections with many airliners and given that Air India, which I was skeptical to book at first, offered a very cheap one-way fare to Bangkok with an excellent stopover time in New Delhi, I couldn't ignore this ticket. The return was with THAI via Stockholm and resulted in a total fare of 950 EUR in both directions with luggage (without domestic flights). KLM was charging 1000 EUR without cabin luggage and EVA Air unfortunately did not fly on the days I needed them to.

Flight

As I was staying in Pattaya and my flight was departing around midnight, I pre-ordered a taxi via booking.com for about 20.15 (8.15 PM) to leave Pattaya with about a ride that will take approximately 90 minutes or so without any traffic. 

The chap dropped me right in front of Gate 5, which was surprisingly close to THAI's check-in counter.

Unlike the last time I was flying with THAI to Frankfurt, the line was deserted with many counters being open. The lady behind the counter informed/asked me whether I'd like to change my seat given that I was in the last row of the plane. I kindly asked her if someone else was occupying any seat next to me. She replied that the middle seat wasn't taken and I kindly neglected her offer to change as all other seats did require me to sit next to someone or be in one of the middle rows.

Check-in did not take more than a few minutes as she had to insert my documents. Boarding pass followed and she informed that I will need to proceed to gate C6 before a certain time. She also told me that luggage will be directed to Amsterdam and did not require any pick up in Stockholm.

Once those formalities were complete, I went to the upper floor through security and border control. About six months ago, this process was long and tedious, however on today's departure this caused no issue with no line at either passport and security. It does seem that Suvarnabhumi has listened to many complaints and actually managed to speed up the process.

Border control & Security took about five minutes to clear before being dropped in this iconic part of Suvarnabhumi. As Priority Pass gives me plenty of options to visit multiple lounges, but I decided to go to the main miracle lounge in the vicinity of Gate D5.

The lounge itself does offer plenty of seating, but tends to be quite crowdy at certain points of food. They do offer a variety of hot and cold food including options for halal food.

A tiny salad bar which limited options consisting of a few greens and some fruits.

On the other side of the salad bar, you can find the hot options which were all thai dishes ranging from some stir-fried veggies to curries. Warm croissants and other pastries were also available.

A cooking station was also available where one can choose between three different dishes.

The lounge is quite spacious with plenty of seating as I said previously, however they could do with some better cleaning as tables seem to be occupied by persons while in fact they weren't as dishes were left alone on the table for too long.

My choice of food for today's flight with the dish ''Kao Man Kai'', which I ordered from the cooking station and my favourite Thai beer LEO.

With boarding time approaching, I decided to leave the gate and head over to my gate for today's departure. Upon arriving to my gate, they were still not boarding.

Found myself a seat in the far aft corner and boarding was eventually called about ten minutes past our scheduled boarding time and went accordingly. I did not bother to jump up and proceed directly to the aircraft as we had a flight of approximately 12 hours to go.

It was unfortunately impossible to grab a decent photo of our bird for today's departure as most of the light was reflecting.

HS-THB, the oldest Airbus A350-900 with an age of 7.8 years old was going to bring us over to Stockholm. It was newly delivered to THAI in August 2016 and is named after the districht Wichian Buri in the province Petchabun. The aircraft is capable of transporting 321 souls with 32 of them being in J class, while the remainder is in Y class. It is also powered by two powerful Rolls Royce Trent XWB engines.

HS-THB - THAI

Serial number:                 44
Type:                                   350-941
First flight date:               22/07/2016
Plane age:                          7.8 years
Seat configuration:         C32 Y289 Seat
Engines:                              2 x RR Trent XWB

Upon embarking the aircraft, I was kindly greeted by all flight attendants I came across with the last one walking me down the aisle to my seat. Given the fact that the bins were all full in my vicinity, I told the flight attendant that it was not an issue for me to keep my bag below my seat as I knew the middle seat would not be occupied.

Legroom was generous and is no issue at all and the seat itself came with a foot standard and the most important thing of my seat was that depite it being the last row, the seat had a generous recline to it.

Unlike Air India's Boeing 787-8 on my first flight which was around the same age, this IFE system was maintained properly and did function like it was brand new.

The view from my seat with a neighbouring A350 pushing back for it's departure.

A blanket and pillow were also awaiting for you on your seat.

Pushback was performed about 17 minutes past our scheduled departure time and made my find my way to the tailcam which gave me a pretty nice view of the aircraft taxiing around. Definitely a feature I'd love to see on more aircraft.

About 30 minutes past our scheduled departure, we were departing from Runway 19R for our flight to Stockholm, which gave me an absolute beautiful view over Krung Thep.

A view of the cabin during our climb out to cruise level.

The foot standard is definitely a nice feature if you are on the shorter side, however I did use it when the seat was in recline as the seat was tilting upwards to go into recline.

WiFi was available throughout the flight with the following plans. Quite on the expensive side considering that KLM for example offers free messaging throughout the entire flight and internet is often very unreliable to pay 40 USD if you opted for streaming.

Flight attendants were quickly out of seat to provide us with our complimentary meal & beverage service. Today's option was between chicken curry and shrimps. Unfortunately the flight attendant did not make it clear to me that the shrimp dish was served with mashed potatoes and in some sort of white sauce.

I'm glad I had some food in the lounge as I only managed to eat the shrimps and the dessert. All other things were not to my liking and did not bother to use. Wine and Soft drinks were also offered, but I politely declined as I only fancied some water, which was already served with the tray.

Starter: Salad of Ham Strips in a sour-sweet sauce
Main: Shrimps in white sauce with mashed potatoes and boiled vegetables.
Dessert: <i style="">Vanille mousse with chocolate chips
Sides: Bun with butter

An additional beverage service was offered after meal if you fancied some more when they were busy cleaning the cabin, however I took this opportunity to grab a photo of the literature in the seat pocket in front of you, which consisted of a Duty Free Magazine, Disposal bag, a WiFi card and a safey card for the current aircraft.

They also handed out those shitty earphones shortly before departure…. Same shitty quality like all the other airlines.

Shortly after meal service, flight attendants instructed us all to lower the window blinds and this was also my queu to grab some sleep for a solid 8 to 9 hours. Woke up somewhere above Poland when it was already daylight and flight attendants were preparing for breakfast.

Paid a quick visit to one of the lavatories before meal service which was still quite clean as flight attendants maintained it quite regularly, however not a lot of amenities available other than some hand soap and a eau de toilette.

After returning to my seat, flight attendants came out to provide us with our breakfast with no choice for food. The meal was the same for everyone and consisted of an omelet with sausage, some fruits, yoghurt, a bottle of water and a croissant served with butter and jam.

Main: Omelette with Sausage, Potato wedges & Veggies.
Sides: Bottle of Water, Plain Yoghurt, Fruit and a Croissant w/ Jam & Butter

Decided to eat my breakfast while watching outside with this beautiful view.

Cabin was cleaned well in advance and about thirty minutes prior to our arrival, the captain informed us that we were descending into Stockholm and thanked us for flying with THAI.

Still loving the camera.

Short final to Runway 01L in quite a foggy Stockholm.

With just a short ride to our gate. Disembarking the aircraft took quite some time though as there seemed to be some issue with the jet bridge as flight crew initially told us to remain seated as we would be towed to a different position…. In the end after 15 minutes or so, they found a solution with the jet bridge making us able to leave the aircraft from that stand.

Once again I had a poor shot from the aircraft that brought us over to Stockholm.

Disembaking was quite slow with passport control being in close vicinity to the gate. Border control wasn't the quickest, but went at a steady pace. All in all it took about 15 minutes to clear passport control from the moment I disembarked the aircraft and went on my way to connect to Amsterdam.

From here on I will continue with the last flight of this trip.