China’s plane crash ‘stalls Thailand’s durian exports’
Five chartered flights carrying durians to China have been indefinitely cancelled following a China Eastern Airlines plane crash in China, a Thai academic said on Tuesday.
Sakda Sriniwet said that following the crash in Yunnan, the airline has informed a Thai exporter that five of its chartered flights have been cancelled with no schedule for resumption.
China Eastern Airlines’ flight MU5735 crashed in mountainous terrain with 132 people on board about an hour into its journey from Kunming to Guangzhou.
Sakda, a former expert from the agricultural product quality development office of the Agricultural Extension Department, said he has learned that one exporter has been affected so far but he is not certain whether other exporters were also affected.
Sakda said the exporter had made a guarantee payment to book the chartered flights. He said China Eastern Airlines has not informed the exporters when it could resume the services.
He said flight cancellation would cause huge damage to durian exporters because freight flights were now the only effective way to transport durians to China.
Sacked explained that China has closed its border checkpoints and closed its ports to try to stem the spread of the Covid-19 and it would take several more months before Thai exporters could use freight services on the China-Laos high-speed railway.
