Thai airways LHR-BKK Trip report

I recently flew Thai Airways Economy class from London to Bangkok and it general it was an OK experience however, there were a few niggles that would genuinely put me off from flying TG Long Haul again.

1)     On-line checkin: Now I’m 6’4”, so getting a good seat in Y is particularly close to my heart, so I’m often reading and waiting to do online checkin 24 hours before it opens. So, I enter my booking number etc and I’m presented with the seat map within which 90%! of the seats are blocked (particularly the better seats near the front). A quick check on Expertflyer.com reveals that virtually no seats are actually occupied so I really don’t understand the logic of blocking out most of economy for online checkin. Maybe its so the better seats can be reserved for TG elites but I can’t believe there can be that many!
2)     Standby upgrades: ExpertFlyer tells me that business class is empty so I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get a C upgrade at a reasonable price. I get to the counter and the checkin clerk tells me its £750 one way, which seems pretty steep for a “lie-flat” (not flat-bed) business class standby upgrade. Given my fare was £750 anyway, 3x£750 (£2,250) doesn’t seem like a great price for a C round trip to BKK. I discussed the fact that cabin was empty with the clerk (who confirmed this fact) yet there was no flexibility on the price. I understand maintaining the exclusivity of Business but given I could have just bought a C round trip for £2,277, the pricing seems crazy. Surely some incremental revenue is better than having an empty business class (which was the reality on the plane).

These are probably minor issues to the average traveller, but they definitely had an impact on the quality of the trip for me. Additionally there were a group of ‘louts’ on the outbound flight who were making a lot of noise, constantly switching the lights on and off and bothering the cabin crew, which made it a bit of an unpleasant trip, but I can’t hold TG responsible for that!

On the plus side, if I weren’t so tall I think the seats would be pretty decent (my other half had no complaints), food / service was good (if not great) and the On-demand entertainment system was pretty good.

Would I use TG again – probably not – when I can book Exit row seats at point of purchase with Singapore Airlines, I’d probably use them instead for an Asia trip. If I had to go direct to Bangkok – maybe, but I think I’d definitely explore other options (i.e. BA) first.

For reference, I was on flight TG911/910 on an Airbus A340-600.