INTERNET SITE OF THE WEEK

TONY WALTHAM

Suvarnabhumi Airport is certainly in the news these days and you never know when you may need to check on the time of a departing or arriving flight - or possibly you'll need to find out which airport it may be departing from soon.

If so, then for the moment FlightStats (http://www.flightstats.com and enter BKK as the airport code) is the site for you since, as pointed out in our Home Review section last week, the Airports of Thailand (AoT) site at www2.airportthai.co.th is more than a little confused and while it promises "flight information live" on both its Thai and English opening pages, there's no action forthcoming.

Not to worry, FlightStats fills the void here and you can also track the airport scorecard and see how many flights are on-time, and how many are delayed - even by airline.

Then there's information about weather and parking, security wait times and links to a whole wealth of information about frequent flier promotions, travel deals and published fares.

There are flight tracking tools and there's plenty of destination information as well as travel warnings and advisories and forums to share your experiences. FlightStats has a remarkable amount of data for air travellers (and their families or loved ones) and we thank reader Pieter Hamans for this recommendation, which works for any operational airport in the world. You just enter the code at the top, and registration to gain access, with much of the information being free.

Bangkok Post
Wednesday January 31, 2007