The Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand (CAAT) has tightened the control of chartered and special flights by Thai airliners and international flights, which land in Thailand for refueling or brief stopovers with their passengers remaining on board.

CAAT director Mr. Chula Sukmanop said today that the new regulation will require all passengers on such flights to carry fit-to-fly certificates, to ensure that they were cleared of COVID-19 before their embarkation.

He explained that the new regulation is designed to prevent a repetition of two recent incidents involving chartered flights of Thai Lion Air and Thai Air Asia X, originating in Indonesia and Malaysia respectively and heading to Tianjin and Guangzhou in China, with non-disembarking stopovers in Bangkok.

Upon arrival in the China it was discovered, by Chinese health officials, that there were people infected with coronavirus among passengers. Both Thai airlines have now been temporarily prohibited from landing in China.

Mr. Chula said that the Civil Aviation Authority of China (CAAC) will immediately ban any airline from landing in China for one week, if it is discovered there up to ten infections among the passengers on each flight, and four weeks if the number of infections are more than 10.

He added that most chartered flights are repatriation flights.