Nok Mini

Updated 12th Aug 2026

Nok Mini stopped flying in 2014. It was the consumer brand of Siam General Aviation (SGA), a Thai commuter operator that ran scheduled and charter services from Bangkok Don Muang Airport (DMK) from October 2002. Its International Air Transport Association (IATA) code was 5E.

SGA was founded on 6 February 2001 and was the airline operator; Nok Mini was the brand its passenger flights carried. A second hub opened at Chiang Mai Airport (CNX) in February 2007. Nok Air owned no part of the business before 2014, and the arrangement between the two companies was a branding and commercial one.

What happened to Nok Mini?

Nok Mini stopped operating in March 2014, and Nok Air retired the name that October. On 28 February 2014 Nok Air had announced that it would buy SGA outright, which would have made the Nok Mini operator a wholly owned subsidiary.

The partnership between the two companies ended in the weeks that followed. SGA's founder, Jain Charnnarong, and the minority shareholders left the business, his health given as the reason, and the airline stopped operating on 30 March 2014. Its aircraft were sold or otherwise disposed of by June that year, and later talks about a sale to Thai AirAsia came to nothing.

The announcement and the shutdown sit five weeks apart, and accounts from the time do not settle whether the purchase completed before SGA stopped flying.

On 7 October 2014 Nok Air said it would drop the Nok Mini name. Patee Sarasin, its chief executive at the time, said the company wanted "to keep it as a single brand". Nok Air took over most of the former Nok Mini routes, among them Mae Sot, Phrae, Nan, Ranong, Loei, Roi Et, Buri Ram, Chumphon and Chiang Mai to Udon Thani.

Those services ran on Nok Air's own Boeing 737-800 jets and Q400 and ATR 72-500 turboprops, none of which Nok Mini had operated.

What kind of airline was Nok Mini?

It worked the low-density end of the market: small aircraft into regional towns, with charter work alongside the scheduled service.

At its widest the network reached twelve Thai cities from the Don Muang and Chiang Mai hubs, plus Yangon and Mawlamyine in Myanmar. Flights between Bangkok and Hua Hin started in November 2004.

Fleet records differ: trade press put Saab 340B turboprops on scheduled services, while photographs and registry listings show Cessna 208B Grand Caravans in SGA and Nok Mini colours.

Can I still fly Nok Mini?

No: the airline stopped flying in 2014 and the name was retired later that year, so a listing that offers a Nok Mini flight today is working from old data.

nokmini.com is still online and it is not a working airline site. Its one dated example route is captioned 2013, there is no functioning booking system, and it carries an outbound link with nothing to do with air travel. The 2026 copyright line does not show that the content is current.

Several airline directory sites also still describe Nok Mini in the present tense, on listings that appear not to have been refreshed since around 2019.

If you came here hoping to fly one of the routes Nok Mini used to run, Nok Air is the airline to look at first.