Airport Link postponed for commercial service until July

BANGKOK, March 4 (TNA) - Thailand's long-delayed Airport Rail Link project, meant to provide direct rail service to and from Suvarnabhumi Airport, was
postponed for commercial service in July due to incompleteness on systems in some areas, according to Transport Minister Sophon Sarum.

Sophon said the rescheduling, first scheduled for April, was because the Siemens Company, Airport Link's contractor, could not complete the work
in time to State Railway of Thailand (SRT) due to problems in some areas including the electrical backup system, the aeronautical radio communications system and 70 uninstalled closed-circuit television cameras.

The minister said that therefore independent safety and system certification engineers (ICE) could not check and verify the systems in order to issue a
certificate standard for the trains.

However, the Airport Link is still open to the public for test runs on schedules, which began in December, so that the certification engineers could check the
systems of the rails and trains when running, according to Mr Sophon.

The checking and verification processes will take at least three months.

Meanwhile, a committee tasked with speeding up the opening of the Airport Link indicated that Siemens will be responsible for the late hand-over of the works as agreed in the contract, which originally stated the submission date in November. The Cabinet allowed a late submission for another 90 days, from due in February.

At an initial stage, Siemens must compensate to SRT a fine of Bt17 million. (TNA)