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The story
On 20 May 2011, the Thai Airways board announced plans to create a new lower-cost airline, at the time dubbed Thai Wings. The creation of the airline was announced by Ampon Kittiampon, the chairman of Thai's board of directors, on 19 August 2011. It began operations in July 2012. According to Ampon, THAI Smile was intended to serve the market gap between low-cost carriers and full service airlines. The name THAI Smile was chosen from a pool of 2,229 entries in a contest to name the airline. According to an official at Thai Airways, THAI Smile was planned to begin showing an annual profit of about five million baht within two years of the start of operations.
In February 2023, it was reported that Thai Smile would be dissolved as a separate entity and merged with its parent company, Thai Airways International, by mid-2024 in an effort to reduce losses. On 18 May 2023, Thai Airways announced that Thai Smile would be merged into its parent as part of the group's post-COVID reconstruction process by the end of 2023. Thai Smile was set to cease all operations on 31 December 2023.
From Wikipedia’s article on Thai Smile, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3