Nok Air

Is Nok Air safe?

Yes. Nok Air has flown since the mid-2000s without a fatal accident or the loss of an aircraft under its own certificate, and it is an IATA member, which requires the IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary safety audit. We score it 78. The record has two landing accidents that damaged aircraft, at Loei in 2016 and Chiang Rai in 2022, and the airline has spent five years in court rehabilitation, which matters less for safety than for whether your flight runs.

What happened at Chiang Rai in 2022?

On 30 July 2022, flight DD108 from Bangkok Don Mueang, a Boeing 737-800 with 170 people on board, landed on runway 03 at Chiang Rai as a thunderstorm passed. It drifted left, ran off the side of the runway and stopped in the grass with its nose gear collapsed. No one was killed.

Thailand's Aircraft Accident Investigation Committee found several causes. The pilot may have corrected too little, partly because the co-pilot had a foot on the right rudder pedal, and did not use reverse thrust straight after touchdown, so the jet kept its speed. The nose landing gear also had a history: its wheels had been changed several times in the six months before, because of vibration on take-off and unusual wear, and a fault in the nose-wheel steering could not be ruled out. A crosswind from the left may have added to the swing. The aircraft was repaired.

That maintenance finding is the part we weigh most. It points to a problem that was seen and fixed repeatedly without being solved. Under our one-event, one-factor rule it counts in the accident score, not again in incidents.

The other damaging event was on 7 July 2016, when a Q400 landed hard at Loei. It was out of service for almost 17 months before returning in December 2017.

The Nok Mini write-off is not Nok Air's

ASN lists one Nok-branded aircraft written offHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary: a Saab 340B flying as Nok Mini flight DD8610 that ran off a taxiway at Udon Thani on 6 October 2013 after a hydraulic failure. No one was hurt. Investigators found the pilots had not completed the abnormal procedure for the hydraulic loss. Nok Mini flights were flown by Siam General Aviation (SGA), a separate airline with its own certificate, aircraft and crews, under a commercial agreement with Nok Air that ended when SGA collapsed in 2014 (ch-aviation). Under our rules the flight counts on the record of the airline that flew it, so we describe it here but do not count it against Nok Air.

Incidents since 2016

AeroInside, which compiles investigation and news reports, lists these events for Nok Air in the last ten years:

• 18 February 2018: a Q400 from Sakon Nakhon shut down an engine in flight and returned safely.
• 2 April 2018: a Q400 had a hydraulic leak while backtracking on the runway at Buri Ram.
• 7 February 2020: a 737-800 being towed at Don Mueang collided with the tow tug.

The list is short, and that is partly because Thai investigators publish little and late; the Chiang Rai report took more than three years. We do not read a short Thai list as a clean record, and the nose-gear history keeps incidents at 66.

Thai Airways and the restructuring

Thai Airways created Nok Air as its low-cost arm and was its largest shareholder for years. That link has faded. Thai Airways said in 2021 that it would sell its stake, and in October 2024 it held 8.91%, while the Jurangkool family owned about 75% (ch-aviation). In 2023 the two still coordinated route planning, but Nok Air holds its own certificate from Thailand's CAAT, with its own crews and maintenance.

The Central Bankruptcy Court approved Nok Air's entry into business rehabilitation in September 2021. The administrators cut the debt owed to creditors from about 27.3 billion baht to 5.4 billion. In December 2024 they asked to extend the plan to six years, and on 9 January 2025 the Stock Exchange of Thailand delisted the shares after the airline repeatedly missed deadlines for audited accounts. Thailand's regulator history is the same as for every Thai airline: ICAO's 2015 safety concern, cleared in 2017, and FAA Category 2FAA IASAThe US FAA's check of whether a country's aviation regulator meets ICAO standards. Category 1 means it does; Category 2 means it does not.More in the glossary from December 2015 until April 2025. Since then Thailand's 2025 ICAO audit has put its effective implementationICAO USOAPICAO's audit of how well each country's aviation regulator oversees safety. The result is an "effective implementation" percentage.More in the glossary at 88.03%, up from 61.60%. Oversight scores 78, like Thai Airways and Bangkok Airways.

What does Nok Air fly?

Only Boeing 737-800s now. Nok Air retired all eight of its Q400 turboprops by 2023, saying the type was too small and costly to maintain. It flew 14 737-800s in late 2024, serving 21 airports in Thailand, India and China, and ch-aviation's profile lists 17 aircraft in 2026. The 737-800 has a long, good record worldwide, but it is the generation before the 737 MAX, and Nok Air's jets are not new (the Chiang Rai jet was built in 2014), so the fleet scores 68.

How to fly Nok Air safely

• Book a buffer on wet-season connections. Thunderstorms over northern Thailand from May to October cause the kind of landing Chiang Rai saw in 2022, and Nok Air has a small fleet with little spare capacity when one jet is out of service.
• Keep your belt fastened until the aircraft stops. Both of Nok Air's damaging accidents happened on landing, and passengers who stay strapped in during a runway excursionRunway excursionWhen an aircraft leaves the runway surface during take-off or landing, either off the end (an overrun) or off the side (a veer-off).More in the glossary are rarely hurt.
• Pay by card. A rehabilitation plan can change schedules at short notice, and a card payment makes a refund easier to claim if a route is cut.

How we scored it

The accident record (86) is strong for a mid-sized low-cost airline: no deaths and no write-offHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary. Fleet (68) and incidents (66) are the weaker factors, for the older 737-800s and the Chiang Rai nose-gear history. Compare Vietjet at 80 and the AirAsia group at 69.