Greater Bay Airlines is set to suspend flights between Hong Kong and the Thai destinations of Bangkok and Phuket from May.
Information from the Hong Kong-based carrier’s booking system indicates that flights between Hong Kong and Bangkok will be cancelled for more than four months starting from 11 May, with services not set to resume until 1 October.
Meanwhile, flights between Hong Kong and Phuket will be suspended from 5 May, with no information currently available on when they will restart.
As of writing, Greater Bay Airlines’ routes to destinations such as Tokyo and Osaka remain unaffected.
Responding to a query from Hong Kong broadcaster TVB, the carrier said that these “short-term adjustments” were due to business considerations amid rising fuel prices and changes to the market environment.
Greater Bay Airlines said it plans to contact the passengers affected by the cancellations and take appropriate steps to address the matter.
[See more: How will the Middle Eastern oil crisis impact the Greater Bay Area?]
Speaking to TVB, Law Cheung-kwok, a senior advisor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Aviation Policy and Research Centre, said that aside from surging oil prices, airlines may also reduce flights in order to cut their losses from the rising cost of operating a specific route and a dip in people’s desire to travel.
Greater Bay Airlines is not the only Hong Kong carrier to have reduced its services due to the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict, which has led to significant increases to fuel costs.
On 11 April, Cathay Pacific announced it would decrease its flight services by roughly 2 percent between 16 May and 30 June, with the move largely impacting regional flights, and, to a lesser extent, those to Australia, South Asia and South Africa.
Cathay Pacific’s budget subsidiary, HK Express, made a similar move, making a 6 percent cut to flights scheduled between 11 May and 30 June.
Hong Kong’s flagship carrier described the cuts as a “last resort” and said the conflict in the Middle East was “negatively impacting the price of jet fuel,” which in turn was “placing huge cost pressures on airlines around the world.”
