As China's National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival "Golden Week" holidays arrive, the Thailand-China aviation network is operating at a record scale. According to Thai tourism authority and aviation industry data, during the week-long National Day holiday (October 1-7), a total of 1,097 direct flights offering nearly 200,000 seats connected 43 Chinese cities with six of Thailand's major airports — Suvarnabhumi, Don Mueang, Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Phuket and Hat Yai. This capacity is up roughly 70 percent year-on-year, a historic high for Thailand-China air routes, underscoring the two countries' deepening cooperation in tourism, trade and investment.

Data from the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) show that when the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holidays are combined (September 25 to October 7, 13 days in total), Thailand expects around 250,000 Chinese visitors, up 24 percent year-on-year, generating an estimated 11.5 billion baht (about 2.3 billion yuan) in tourism revenue, up 37 percent. For the narrower October 1-7 National Day week alone, TAT projected roughly 183,000 to 185,000 Chinese arrivals — about 88 percent of pre-pandemic 2019 levels — generating an estimated 5.1 billion baht, with daily arrivals up roughly 30 percent compared with earlier this year. Actual arrival figures showed that in the week of September 27 to October 3, Chinese arrivals to Thailand reached 133,946, up 41.98 percent week-on-week, with Chinese visitors accounting for roughly a quarter of all foreign arrivals — continuing to make China Thailand's single largest source market.

Behind the capacity expansion is a year of route additions and fleet deployment by airlines on both sides. Thai AirAsia now operates direct flights to 12 mainland Chinese cities — Kunming, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shantou, Changsha, Chengdu, Chongqing, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Xi'an, Shanghai and Beijing — totaling 115 flights a week; TAT and AirAsia have signed a three-year cooperation framework covering joint marketing, new route development and tourism-trade matchmaking. Thai Airways continues to operate 42 weekly flights to Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Kunming and Guangzhou, and plans to double its capacity from the 2025-2026 winter season, resuming pre-pandemic routes to Xiamen, Chongqing and Changsha and adding new destinations in Wuhan and Shenzhen. Industry data show that Thailand-China seat capacity has grown from roughly 200 weekly flights and about 40,000 one-way seats seven years ago to nearly 1,300 weekly flights and about 250,000 one-way seats today — a more than fivefold increase reflecting the route's structural expansion before and after the pandemic.

On the source-market side, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Hangzhou and Chongqing are the leading Chinese departure cities, with Shanghai alone accounting for about 19 percent of total capacity. Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Phuket are the Thai destinations seeing the most concentrated growth in direct flights from China, with all three airports recently adding or increasing Chinese routes; bookings for flights to Phuket were up about 78 percent year-on-year. To cope with the sustained rise in passenger traffic, Airports of Thailand (AOT) has announced an expansion plan worth at least US$2.86 billion for its six major airports, aiming to raise the combined annual passenger capacity of Suvarnabhumi, Don Mueang, Phuket, Hat Yai, Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai from about 116 million currently to at least 246.5 million by 2032, creating infrastructure headroom for continued growth on Thailand-China routes.

Underpinning this wave of capacity growth is the permanent mutual visa-exemption arrangement between Thailand and China, in effect since March 1, 2024. Under the arrangement, citizens of both countries may enter visa-free for tourism, family visits, business purposes (including conferences and sourcing trips) or transit, staying up to 30 days per visit and no more than 90 days within any 180-day period. The arrangement is widely seen as having significantly lowered the threshold for Chinese tourists and business travelers, serving as an important institutional underpinning for the sustained rise in Thailand-China air capacity over the past two years. China had earlier announced a unilateral visa-free trial for Thailand and other countries in late 2023, with Thailand subsequently following with a reciprocal arrangement; the two countries upgraded that temporary measure into the long-term, permanent mutual exemption in March 2024.

The growth in air capacity and visitor numbers has moved in step with warming Thailand-China economic ties more broadly. China remains Thailand's largest trading partner, with bilateral trade surpassing 1 trillion yuan in 2025, up 28 percent year-on-year. In July, Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul completed his first visit to China since taking office, bringing back a series of cooperation agreements, including letters of intent between TAT and several Chinese tourism and technology companies. Thai authorities subsequently held the "MEET Thai Plus 2026" overseas economic promotion event in Shenzhen, organized by the Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau (TCEB) and described as the agency's largest overseas economic promotion mission to date. The two sides have also announced a five-year (2025-2031) trade and economic cooperation plan focused on semiconductors, batteries, sustainable production, digital infrastructure and agriculture, and plan to build a joint digital economy platform linking finance, cross-border trade and AI research; the two countries have also made progress on strengthening defense and diplomatic dialogue mechanisms and on roughly $2.15 billion in investment projects from Chinese technology firms in Thailand.

Analysts say that as the permanent visa-exemption policy continues to operate normally, airlines on both sides keep adding routes, and bilateral trade and investment frameworks are gradually implemented, air capacity is likely to keep growing through future peak travel seasons. Industry observers also caution, however, that the profile of Chinese visitors to Thailand is shifting from traditional sightseeing toward business travel, MICE events and customized high-end tourism, while other regional destinations are simultaneously stepping up flight capacity and marketing toward the Chinese market, intensifying competition. Whether Thailand can consistently convert rising flight capacity into actual tourism revenue and investment outcomes — rather than figures limited to flight schedules and seat counts — will depend on visitor numbers, per-visitor spending and the pace of investment-deal implementation in the coming quarters.