BANGKOK: Thai Airways International Plc (THAI) on Wednesday (Jan 31) clarified that its pilot decided to land flight TG465 in Sydney due to unfavourable weather conditions at Melbourne airport in southeastern Australia.
In a Facebook post on Wednesday, the national flag carrier assured that all its flight crews strictly followed international standards on air navigation and safety, and were certified by domestic and international supervising bodies. It added that the airline’s primary goal was to ensure the safety of passengers.
The airline was responding to a Facebook post of a Thai passenger who on Monday had expressed his grievance flying TG465 from Bangkok to Melbourne on Jan 28. The man accused the flight captain of lying about bad weather and switching to landing at Sydney airport after about 20 minutes of circling around Melbourne airport.
The post by the 40-year-old businessman also said that according to the report on his iPhone, the weather on that day in Melbourne was clear with temperature of 21 degrees and visibility of at least 10km. He added that he had flown to Melbourne over a 1,000 times.
After the post went viral and attracted criticism from netizens, the man later said on Facebook that he was sorry for his earlier post, which he admitted as “lacking in consideration”, and apologised to every related party.
Data from flightaware.com indicates that flight TG465 left Suvarnabhumi Airport at 7.07pm (Thailand time) on Jan 28 and landed at Sydney Airport at 8.51am (local time) on Jan 29. The flight then left Sydney at 10.29am and landed at Melbourne Airport at 11.41am.
The flight was originally scheduled to land in Melbourne at 7.20am. - The Nation/ANN
