Betong International Airport

Updated 2nd Sep 2026

Betong International Airport (BTZ) is in the Betong district of Yala province, in the far south of Thailand near the Malaysian border. Its International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) code is VTSY, and Thailand's aeronautical information publication lists it under the aerodrome name Yala/Betong. It is operated by the Department of Airports and it opened on 14 March 2022.

It is a small airport with one runway, 1,800 metres long and 30 metres wide, marked 07 at one end and 25 at the other. Reports in 2022 described a plan to lengthen it to 2,100 metres so that Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 sized aircraft could use it. As of September 2026 the published length is still 1,800 metres.

Who flies here now

Ezy Airlines has flown between Hat Yai and Betong since 27 June 2025. The airline is based at Hat Yai Airport and works the route with a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan EX. It is the only airline whose movements appear in the Department of Airports' flight records for Betong.

Those records file the Hat Yai to Betong flights as scheduled domestic service in every month from June 2025 to February 2026, the newest month published, with no month missing. Five of those months also carry charter movements alongside the scheduled ones.

The Grand Caravan is a small aircraft, so a full flight is a handful of people rather than a planeload. The flight takes about 45 minutes. The road between Hat Yai and Betong runs roughly 250 kilometres through mountain terrain and takes about four hours, which is what the air service replaces.

A history of flights that did not last

The first departure from Betong, on the opening day in March 2022, was a Nok Air service to Don Mueang in Bangkok, and it carried ten passengers. Within 48 hours the airline cancelled its next two Betong flights, having sold 11 tickets for one and four for the other. Nok Air also pointed at costs: "Operating costs are high, especially the cost of jet fuel and various fees related to flight operations."

Bangkok flights came back later that year as a subsidised programme branded Flying Betong Direct, which ran in two phases from late April 2022. In September 2022 Nok Air said it would not run another phase, telling Nation Thailand that it needed the aircraft on routes "where there are more passengers". The flights stopped that October, and no Nok Air movement appears in the Department of Airports' records for Betong in 2025 or 2026.

A second airline got as far as being reported in talks. In November 2022 the Betong tourism association was said to be discussing a Betong to Hat Yai route with Bangkok Airways, with the proposal put to the Transport Ministry for approval. No Bangkok Airways movement appears in the department's records for the airport in 2025 or 2026, nearly four years later.

Two spells of Bangkok service in 2022 amounted to less than eight months of flying between them. Check with the airline that the Hat Yai service is running on your dates before you build a trip around it.

Where the airport is

The airport is about 8.4 kilometres from Betong town, on a bearing of roughly 78 degrees, which is east-north-east rather than north-east. Its postal address is 125 Moo 8, Yarom, Betong, Yala 95110, and the aerodrome reference point sits 225 metres above sea level.

Published figures for that distance disagree. Thailand's aeronautical information publication for VTSY says in its own text that the airport is 10 kilometres north-east of the city, while the coordinates printed in the same document put it at the shorter and more easterly figure above.

Travelling to Yala province

Betong is a district of Yala province. As of 1 September 2026, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) advises against all but essential travel to parts of southern Thailand near the Thailand-Malaysia border, and its regional risks page for Thailand lists Yala province among them. That advice is written at province level and does not name Betong separately.