Thai Regional Airlines

Updated 12th Aug 2026

Thai Regional Airlines was a small charter and air taxi operator based at Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport, and its flying ended after the 1 August 2016 accident. Its licence covered non-scheduled service, and the flying itself was charter and air-taxi work with a small piston twin.

Is Thai Regional Airlines still flying?

No. The official account of its end is filed under another company name, Rabbit Wings Airways Company Limited, which the airline code registry avcodes.co.uk records as Thai Regional renamed. Thailand's Aircraft Accident Investigation Committee (AAIC), the state body that investigates air accidents, records that the company ceased air navigation service after one of its aircraft crashed on 1 August 2016.

The two-letter code RW it used has since been recalled by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), according to the same registry.

The 2016 accident that ended Thai Regional Airlines' flying

The company held an air operation business licence for non-scheduled service, granted on 19 February 2016 and valid until 18 February 2021. On 1 August 2016 its Piper PA-31-350 Navajo Chieftain was flying from Nakhon Ratchasima Airport to Suvarnabhumi with four people on board when both engines ran out of fuel. The aircraft was destroyed in the forced landing, the pilot was killed, and two of the other three on board were seriously injured.

The AAIC's final report on the accident did not appear until 20 December 2023, more than seven years later, and it names the operator as Rabbit Wings Airways Company Limited.

What Thai Regional Airlines flew, and where

The aircraft in the accident report was a Piper PA-31-350 Navajo Chieftain registered HS-FGB, built in 1976 and acquired by the company in October 2014. The Chieftain is a piston-engined twin seating ten at most, not a turboprop and not a jet.

In December 2012 the aviation news service ch-aviation reported the airline operating the Piper from Suvarnabhumi to Hua Hin Airport and Koh Samui. Its own booking pages that year also listed Nakhon Ratchasima, Buriram, Hat Yai and Phuket, and in 2013 its site described the Phuket to Hat Yai service as a non-scheduled flight only.

The scheduled service Thai Regional Airlines planned and withdrew

The company announced Airbus A320 flights from Suvarnabhumi to Chiang Mai, Phuket and Khon Kaen, due to begin on 12 December 2012. It withdrew all three routes before the first flight, saying the aircraft had taken longer to acquire than expected.

The airlines index lists the carriers this site currently shows as operating on Thai domestic routes.