Update, November 4: Suvarnabhumi Airport and the Ministry of Transport have since confirmed the incident. Airport officials said Emirates flight EK373 could not continue taxiing on Taxiway E21 at 9.11pm on November 2 and was towed clear at 10.18pm. Airports of Thailand closed the centre runway overnight on November 3 and dug out 33 centimetres of surface on the runway and the taxiway.
An unconfirmed report of another runway incident at Suvarnabhumi International Airport has circulated on social media, a week after a China Airlines aircraft became stuck on the runway in Bangkok.
The first incident occurred on October 28 at about 7.20pm, when a China Airlines aircraft sank its main landing gear into the runway threshold while preparing to depart Suvarnabhumi Airport for Kaohsiung.
The airport later said heavy rain had caused water to accumulate and raised the water table until the surface structure gave way under the aircraft’s weight.
Paweena Jariyathitipong, chief executive of Airports of Thailand (AOT), said engineering checks found soft soil with high water content beneath the airport.
The chief stated that Suvarnabhumi Airport has been open for around 20 years, handling approximately 700,000 flights per year, and that maintenance is performed in accordance with safety standards.
The Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand has written to AOT asking it to explain the cause and to report what it will do to prevent a repeat. Its director, Air Chief Marshal Manat Chawanaprayoon, said the early understanding was that construction material may have deteriorated, but that this still has to be checked in detail.
The regulator also told AOT to use technology to test the structural strength of the runways, taxiways and aprons, so that weak points can be found and repaired before the weight of an aircraft damages them.
Paweena said the places needing most attention are where aircraft turn or change direction, such as turn heads, taxiway exits and runway thresholds, which take more force and twisting than a straight run. AOT is scanning the surface to decide which points need work, and because it cannot close the airfield it is repairing in sections, shutting an area from 8pm to 6am for ten days at a time.
Following the first incident, the Facebook page AeroHopper posted a claim on Monday, November 2, that an Emirates A380 had encountered sunken ground overnight near the earlier location. The page said the aircraft had been held for more than an hour and a half.
AeroHopper identified the flight as EK373, travelling from Bangkok to Dubai, and said other flights used a nearby taxiway while the A380 remained in place.
Another Facebook page, ThaiTribune, reported similar information and included a screen recording from a flight-tracking application. The post showed aircraft markers at the same location, with other planes using a nearby taxiway.
However, at the time of writing the report had not been confirmed by Suvarnabhumi Airport or any involved department, and no major Thai or English-language news agencies had reported the incident.
The flight could not be independently checked because historical records for EK373 require a paid subscription. Neither Facebook post shows the runway surface, and the recording is a map displaying aircraft markers.
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The story Unconfirmed runway incident at Suvarnabhumi Airport circulated on social media as seen on Thaiger News.