Suvarnabhumi Airport escaping ravaging floods

-Encircled by 3.5-meter-high polder dykes fortified by stone-weighted gabions and concrete sandbags and constantly drained by gigantic water pipes, Suvarnabhumi International Airport, the most important conduit between Bangkok and outside world, is fully confident of staying proof from floods even in the "worst scenario". In a tent-shaped operation center near a dyke in the north of the airport, workers, experts and airport officials sat around a long table under the scorching sunshine, watching over the flood waters flowing quietly along the dyke. "Suvarnabhumi is confident of its highly capable flooding prevention system," Somchai Sawasdeepon, senior executive vice president of Airports of Thailand Public Company Limited (AOT), told a group of reporters on the site. Don Muang Airport, a comparatively older airport in northern Bangkok also run by AOT , has been engulfed by flood waters. As a result, Somchai told Xinhua, two airliners, Nok Air and Orient Thai, which were based in Don Muang, have transferred all their flights to Suvarnabhumi, making the average number of its flights per day rise up to 900 and total passengers around 100,000. "Suvarnahhumi is pretty stressed right now, but we will pass through it,"he said. "Even in the worst scenario, we will be safe from floods." Samchai said the polder dyke surrounding the airport had been upgraded to fight flood. It is now 3.5m in height, 37m in width and 23.5km in length. "It is very strong and capable of preventing the penetration of water."