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Thai Lion Air plans to add two 737-900s to fleet by year-end
September 19th 2025
Thai Lion Air is expecting to accept at least two 737-900s by December to expand to destinations with high demand, particularly China and Japan, the LCC’s CEO, Aswin Yangkirativorn, told the Bangkok Post. Read More » However, due to a present decline in foreign and Chinese tourists, the airline has had abandon plans to operate a fleet of more than 40 jets, she said. "We are still optimistic Thai tourism will eventually improve. We adjusted our fleet expansion based on overall tourism growth," Aswin said. Thai Lion Air flies 21 B737-800s and nine B737-900s. The airline also is planning to introduce four to five more of the narrow-body type to its fleet in 2026. Thai Lion Air head of commercial, Nuntaporn Komonsittivate, said with a fleet of 32 aircraft, the airline forecasts transporting seven million to eight million passengers this year, up from the four million to five million air travellers flown in 2024. The airline’s passenger numbers will be lower than the 10 million passengers it flew in pre-pandemic 2019. It does not plan to operate wide-body aircraft to date as popular destinations like Japan still perform well with narrow-bodies so the carrier will continue to rely solely on Boeing planes, she said. In the fourth quarter, Thai Lion Air will launch Bangkok-Hokkaido via Kaohsiung, Bangkok-Osaka via Taipei, Bangkok-Chongqing and Bangkok-Tianjin. It also intends to increase capacity on domestic routes and to Delhi and open markets such as South Korea. By December, the LCC will to have re-started flights to ten cities in China, eight in India and five in Japan and to 17 domestic routes, Nuntaporn said. China routes have been sustained by Thai passengers, who are now 50% of its customers, up from 30% pre-COVID. There should not be intense price wars in the three months as airlines will compete on service quality and on-time performance rather than fare discounts, she forecasts.
