PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

The expansion of low-cost carriers (LCC) in the past two decades has increased the number of air passengers and visitors to countries around the globe. The resulting growth of the tourism industry worldwide has challenged airports in shaping their operations. Thus, the purposes of the study were to: 1) investigate efficient areas in airport operations; and 2) investigate inefficient areas in airport operations of Thai airports. Semi-structured interviews were adopted to collect qualitative data from 30 LCC staff. The research results showed that Thailand airports had efficiencies in providing a number of security check points, cooperation of security agencies, standard safety equipment, wide ranges of ancillary services, friendly staff and regular arrangement of airport meetings with airline representatives, whereas capabilities of security staff, airlines and passenger facilities, language ability of airport staff, attitudes of airport staff, service allocation, unequal treatments, price of food and goods and terminal function designs are areas of inefficiencies.