Chiang Mai—
At 9:57 PM, on February 7th, 2024, Thai national media reported that a foreign tourist in his early forties from Canada went into a panic and attempted to open an airplane door while taking off from Chiang Mai to travel to Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok.
A Thai Facebook account posted regarding the incident that the flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok was about to take off, however, an unidentified foreign tourist attempted to force open an airplane door for an unknown reason.
At the same time, HFlight.net, a Facebook page about flight schedules, mentioned the incident showing data from Flightradar24 as several numbers of flights could not land at Chiang Mai airport.
The data from Flightradar24 indicated that the TG121 flight scheduled to take off from Chiang Mai at 9:05 PM was ordered to return to a stopover at 10:40 PM. As a result, many flights were affected by the incident and requested new aerial routes.
At 10:54 PM, flights could operate as scheduled, however, many flights landed at another airport. At 12:43 AM, TG121 took off from Chiang Mai to Suvarnabhumi airport, according to HFlight.net.
On February 8th, 2024, Mr. Ronnakorn Chalermsanyakorn, the Director of Chiang Mai Airport, publicly revealed after the incident that 13 flights were temporarily suspended, with a total of 2,296 passengers affected by the incident.
Furthermore, the Chiang Mai Airport held a security committee meeting with airline representatives, police, and relevant agencies to discuss the matter and solutions to prevent future incidents.
Initially, Chiang Mai police investigated the unidentified tourist and pressed airline-related charges on him. He was later recognised as a Canadian national, 40, who claimed that he was going to be attacked and as a result fled the plane. Multiple Witnesses and flight attendants stated to the Thai media that there was no sign of anyone trying to attack the man or of him having any sort of altercation with anyone else on the flight.
The tourist remained in Thai police custody as of press time.
This article originally appeared on our sister website The Pattaya News.
