Review of Thai Lion Air flight from Bangkok to Nakhon Si Thammarat in Economy

After having spend some great time with my parents in-law in Sisaket, it was now time for me and my wife to head over to our next destination. Due to the pregnancy of my wife, choices were somewhat limited and we wanted to head to a more quiet and laid back place, so our choice ended up by heading to both Kiriwong and Khanom. In order to get to those places, we decided to find ourselves a ticket from Ubon Ratchathani to Nakhon Si Thammarat and rent a car from there.

As Nakhon si Thammarat airport is only served by three airlines with about nine daily flights to Bangkok Don Mueang, it meant that choices for us were limited in order to find a reasonable ticket on an one-way itinerary that would bring us into NST at a reasonable time like late afternoon giving us only Thai Lionair or Thai AirAsia as a reasonable option. Despite being a bit more expensive, we decided to opt for the latter one as SL gave us a later start with the shortest wait in DMK and would bring us into NST at around 3 PM if no delay.

As apparently we had about more than three hours to kill in DMK due to a delay that was according to Thai Lionair not a delay, but simply a retiming they didn't advise anyone about for that specific day, we decided not to stay airside and simply exit via baggage claim to grab our late breakfast or lunch at DMK's food court. After having a 30 minute lunch or so, we decided to head back to airside and were directly forwarded by the friendly security chap to the fast track lane as my wife was pregnant. Security once again took less than a solid minute as we tend to travel lightly in Thailand with just the mandatory things equipped with us in our carry-on back (the rest is in our hold luggage).

Given that I have access to several lounges in the domestic terminal of DMK (Terminal 2) through my priority pass, we decided to head to the first one we come across, which again is the Nok Air Lounge located between pier 41-46 to 50-56. Not that it really matters as the Miracle or Coral Lounge here aren't that excited either and are similar to Nok's lounge, though the lounge does have some comfy seats like the one we occupy right below.

The complimentary buffet is marked clearly by those awful yellow slabs Nok Air is using for their lounge, yet understandable as the yellow tint is their colour, but these yellowish slabs are so awful and not pleasing to the eye.

In the most aft Kitchen counter top one can find their coffee, tea, juices and fizzy drinks. Also hot water and cup noodles are available here.

the biggest kitchen isle in the buffet area contains some hot food options with a limited variety between Asian and International cuisine including a corn soup today.

Obviously the main star of the hot food is the chicken satay for me, however expect the other Thai options to be very well known like a curry or stir-fried veggies. The international option tends to be often some sort of pasta.

While we spend the remainder of our time in the lounge, we decided to leave the lounge about 30 minutes for the so-called retimed departure of 15:00 as we had to stroll back to security as the pier used for our flight was the most westly pier available in Terminal 2….. What I wonder is though that this pier was totally cramped with the other two piers being deserted. Couldn't they spread out the flights a bit more between the piers to lower the load as the load?

By the time we reached our gate for the flight to Nakhon Si Thammarat, our aircraft was already waiting at the gate for us to depart as soon as it is possible. So the so-called retimed departure, which basically just means delayed in the phrasing of Thai Lionair (as they've done it so often in my past experience) was simply not due to ATC restrictions, but more like a late release by maintenance as the aircraft simply arrived to DMK the day prior from Batam and didn't fly for a single week prior to that.

Of course Thai Lion air would never communicate this, but doing a bit of digging into FR24 explains a lot as shown below.

The flight however was firstly scheduled to be on one of their bigger -900 jets, but was downgraded the day prior to an -800. HS-LGQ was going to perform the duties of bringing us to Nakhon Si Thammarat. This 11.5 year old (at time of flying) Boeing 737-800 was newly delivered o Lion Air in January 2014 before being transferred to it's sister company in March 2024 where it has been flying since.

As we were in one of the most aft gates in the pier, this airport gives you great views over the taxiways though with clear views when we saw this Airbus A320 of Batik completing their pushback (tug and all was already gone by now) for their departure to Denpasar (Bali) as ID7636.

An Boeing 737-900 (HS-LVK) of Thai Lion Air taxiing out for it's departure to Phuket as SL766.

Boarding was eventually called about 30 minutes for our departure and we were one of the last ones to actually decide to board the aircraft.

While ground staff already called for boarding, the aircraft and it's flight crew were not ready as of yet resulting in us being hold back in the jetbridge with ground staff doing final inspections on those with carry-on trolleys whether the amounts were over and whether some people had tags on them to put them into hold. Obviously some did try to hide their trolleys with success from staff  to avoid them being put into the hold despite having been told and tagged prior that luggage has to go into the hold.

Some progress have been made and we are nearly there, though it took about 15 to 20 minutes to actually get to this position. Must admit that I have rarely seen a boarding process taking that long in Thailand ever.

Upon entering the cabin we were not greeted by any flight attendants who at this point were already in process of getting the cabin fully ready and were making announcements as we were the last ones to board. We, however, were met with a smell of a brand new cabin, which indicates to me that the cabin was actually refurbished.

Eventually made it to my to seat 06F with just a short walk. Seats were paddy and offered sufficient and offered some what of a generous legroom for a LCC carrier.

Individual air vents could be found above.

And when checking through the cabin, my suspision was confirmed that this aircraft got a refurbishment as I could not find any scratch or wear and tear on this specific bird and everything looked like it was brand new despite being an aircraft over 10 years old, so I guess they did an excellent job on the overhaul. Table was spotlessly clean too!

Cabin view of my seat.

And the view from my window is not too shabby either.

Pushback eventually started at 14.59 with a result that our scheduled departure was delayed by 1 hour and 19 minutes for our 1 hour and 20 minutes flight down south with some rainy weather slowly approaching the airport.

About 15.11 (1 hour 31 minute delay) we were finally rolling down Runway 21R (usually departures are using 21L) for our departure to NST.

The literature in the seat pocket of this specific flight was similar to my previous, though included a magazine of the airline this time next to a safety card, BoB menu and a trashbag.

The BoB menu of SL is very limited with the hot food options being only some cup noodles and they charge you about 3 a 4 times the price you'd pay for them in a Thai 7/11 store, so it is up to you to decide whether that is considered expensive or not.

Not much went around with the cabin crew walking down the aisle without trolley asking passengers whether they were willing to buy something from the BoB menu. It's like cabin crew doesn't even bother bringing down the trolley down the aisle anymore as the amount of passengers actually buying something is very limited. On our flight I think I saw them walking up and down the aisle twice with some snacks and drinks to provide to people. The sale wouldn't have been more than 300 THB (10USD) on this flight though.

Eventually the captain announced himself to inform that we were already in descent to NST providing us with the weather update and estimated landing time, but no mention were ever made on the delay itself.

Landing was eventually via the long way around as we were to line up with Runway 01 for our arrival resulting in us touching down at 16.21.

After vacating the runway I finally saw the first glimpse of the terminal, which was extremely large in comparison to the amount of flights they are actually serving, however this specific terminal has been constructed and opened in 2023 with the idea that this airport will be able to handle more domestic and international flights, yet the international flights to this date have not been announced by any airline and it doesn't really see much growth from the domestic market too. I think this airport could do with a connection to BKK itself too, which has not happened either.

The idea of the government was to make it easier for Chinese, Malaysian and Singaporean citizens to find a quick way to Sichon or Khanom beach, though both places could also be reached via Surat Thani (which is just about a 15 to 30 minute longer drive) and the terminal itself is capable of handling 4 million travellers annually, though it is far from complete on the inner side as you will witness on my next report.

Parked at our gate at 16.21 resulting in a total delay of 1 hour 21 minutes and cabin was quickly being readied for the disembarkation. While the photo is taken in a rush, the seat I was on was actually quite comfy and well-padded.

Thai Lionair serves NST five times daily with our flight being the third one of the day, while the 4th one that was suppose to be later than us was already in NST about 20 minutes ahead of us. One could wonder whether it was not easier to swap both planes for the flights so delay was more minimized for us and wouldn't be all too bad for them, though I guess that would mess up their organizing schedule.

Though I must admit that I love this kind of glass jetbridges.

One last view of our bird.

Once we have actually exited the jetbridge, we were met with a very sterile terminal where one if spoken could hear the echo of his own voice. It also felt more like I was walking into an hospital rather than an airport ignoring the signage obviously.

By the time me and my wife paid a visit to one of the toilets, luggage was already on belt and awaiting to be picked up.

Once we had collected our luggage, we made our way to Avis to collect our rental car and if you ever paid a visit to this airport and expect to grab a rental car, I would highly suggest you to pick either Hertz or Budget as the car I got from Avis wasn't particularly the best (had no issue though) and staff wasn't all too familiar with foreigners.

Once collected, we were quickly on our way to our hotel in Kiriwong with a ride of about 45 minutes giving us a view of the terminal from the other side.

Thanks for stopping by!