Departure
96%
vs 95% ▲ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Samui Airport (VTSM) is a privately owned airport on the island of Ko Samui in the Gulf of Thailand, built and operated by Bangkok Airways and opened in 1989. Its single hard-surfaced runway and open-air, thatched-roof terminals set amid tropical landscaping make it one of the more distinctive fields a visiting VFR pilot will encounter in Southeast Asia. Traffic is dominated by Bangkok Airways scheduled services, with the airfield sitting close to the island's northern beaches of Bo Phut and Chaweng.
Samui Airport serves the resort island of Ko Samui and is unusual in aviation terms for being privately owned and operated by Bangkok Airways rather than by a state authority. It was built specifically to open up the island to tourism, with construction beginning in 1982 and the airport officially opening in April 1989. The open-sided terminal buildings, set among tropical planting, give the field a distinctive character that makes it a point of interest for visiting pilots as well as passengers, and it remains one of the busier airports in Thailand despite its resort-island setting.
The airport lies on the northern part of Ko Samui Island, in the Bo Phut subdistrict, roughly 2 kilometres north of the island's main resort centre of Chaweng and close to Bo Phut Beach. It sits within Changwat Nakhon Si Thammarat administratively, on an island in the Gulf of Thailand off the coast of Surat Thani Province. The field is close to the Big Buddha Pier, from which ferries depart for the neighbouring island of Ko Pha-ngan, a useful landmark for pilots orienting themselves on approach.
Samui has a single physical runway aligned 17/35, with a hard, lit surface throughout. Runway 17 is 6,243 feet long, while the reciprocal Runway 35 is listed at 5,897 feet; both ends are lit for night operations. There is no ILS installed at the field.
Pilots can expect an approach frequency of 129.6 MHz, an ATIS on 128.6 MHz, and a tower frequency of 118.9 MHz at Samui. No instrument landing system is available, so arrivals and departures should be planned on the basis of visual or other non-precision procedures.
The Big Buddha Pier, on the north side of the island near the airport, is a recognisable landmark for pilots approaching from over the water, marking the ferry crossing point to Ko Pha-ngan. The airport lies between the beach resorts of Bo Phut and Chaweng, both of which are useful coastal reference points when transiting the island visually.
Samui Airport was built by Bangkok Airways, with construction beginning in 1982 and the airport officially opening in April 1989, giving the island direct air access for the first time and underpinning its subsequent growth as a tourist destination. Its open-air design, with air-conditioned space limited to the gift shop, ticket office, toilets and VIP lounge, was a deliberate choice to blend the airport with its natural surroundings. Thai Airways International began twice-daily flights between Bangkok and Samui in February 2008 using Boeing 737-400 aircraft, a service that continued until 2018. Bangkok Airways has since pursued plans to develop the airport as a secondary international hub, with a near-monopoly on air services to the island, and Scoot introduced an Embraer E190 service from Singapore in May 2024.
Samui Airport remains privately owned and operated by Bangkok Airways, which provides the majority of flights to and from the island. The airport handles both domestic and international traffic, including scheduled services to destinations such as Bangkok, Phuket, Chiang Mai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, and is one of the busier airports in Thailand by passenger numbers. Prior permission is required for drone operations within a 9-kilometre radius of the airport, reflecting active control of the surrounding airspace.