Pai Airport

Updated 2nd Sep 2026

Pai Airport (PYY) has no scheduled airline service. One airline announced a service for October 2026 and shelved it in the last week of August 2026, before it had flown a single commercial flight into the airport.

What Pai Airport is, and where it sits

The airfield is in Wiang Tai subdistrict, in Pai district of Mae Hong Son province, about 1.5 kilometres almost due north of the town centre. It stands 1,676 feet above sea level. Its single runway, 01/19, is 710 metres long and 18 metres wide, surfaced in concrete and asphalt, and the pavement is rated for aircraft weighing up to 5,700 kilograms.

There is no air traffic control here. Thailand's aeronautical information publication lists Pai as an uncontrolled aerodrome approved for visual flight rules only, which means pilots arrive by sight, in weather good enough to do it, and fly a left-hand circuit. The same entry lists no fuel, no cargo handling and no repair facilities for a visiting aircraft.

Prior notice is compulsory here. The published aerodrome entry requires an aircraft to telephone Pai before it flies, on +66 5369 9209 or +66 89 956 2709.

The Department of Airports runs the airport, and Pai has no aerodrome director of its own. It is administered under the director of Mae Hong Son Airport, about 49 kilometres west in a straight line.

The airport's history, and why the runway is short

The Department of Civil Aviation's own history of the field describes how it came to be here, and it begins in the Second World War. The strip started as a temporary wartime airfield built by Japanese forces moving through Pai towards Mae Hong Son and Burma, using foreign prisoner-of-war labour, and it was abandoned once the war ended.

It came back into use around 1952, alongside other small airfields in Mae Hong Son province, for light aircraft flown by the Thai Airways Company on a Chiang Mai to Mae Hong Son to Pai loop. The province's mountain roads made a journey of several days out of what an aeroplane covered in an afternoon.

A private operator, Siam Sky Aviation, ran Chiang Mai to Pai passenger and mail charters from 1973 to 1977. The department then rebuilt the runway in compacted laterite in 1980, at 700 metres by 20 metres.

A plan followed in 1985 to extend that runway to 1,000 metres. The land was bought and, on the department's own account, the work was never carried out once the officer who had pressed for it moved on. That is why the runway is still short today.

Kan Air's Chiang Mai to Pai flights, and how they ended

Kan Air's own published schedule for September 2016 lists Chiang Mai to Pai as one of nine routes it flew out of Chiang Mai International Airport (CNX).

Around 20 and 21 April 2017 the airline suspended all of its operations, not only the Pai route, after the last aircraft it could fly, a Cessna Grand Caravan 208B, was grounded with a technical fault. Its ATR 72-500 had already been out of service since 20 March that year. Kan Air has not operated since.

Can you fly to Pai now?

There is no scheduled flight to book, and the nearest thing to one was called off at the end of August 2026. Ezy Airlines, a small carrier based at Hat Yai International Airport (HDY) in the south, announced in July 2026 that it would fly Chiang Mai to Pai from 1 October 2026 and would be the sole scheduled operator at the airport.

In the last week of August 2026 it shelved that plan, along with its planned Chiang Mai to Mae Hong Son and Chiang Mai to Nan services, before flying a commercial flight on any of them. The obstacle sat at the Chiang Mai end, not at Pai. Chiang Mai International Airport told the airline it would charge an aircraft parking fee on every landing, and the airline said a full aircraft at its planned fares would not have covered that one fee, before fuel, crew or maintenance.

The halt was reported as an indefinite suspension rather than a permanent cancellation, and its southern operations out of Hat Yai were not affected. The governor of Mae Hong Son has asked the Ministry of Transport, and the airport operator Airports of Thailand, to look again at the fee. Nothing that happens at Pai itself resolves it.

The Department of Airports' movement records show six flights by Ezy Airlines at Pai in January 2026, all of them logged as business or executive traffic rather than scheduled service. Its record for the whole of 2025 shows no aircraft movements at Pai at all.

Getting to Pai without flying

With nothing scheduled at the airport, reaching Pai means travelling overland. The nearest airport with scheduled flights is Chiang Mai International Airport, about 87 kilometres from Pai in a straight line, and the mountain road between the two is longer than that.

The Pai destination guide covers the road journey and what to expect on arrival.