What's going on
On October 14, Queen Suthida of Thailand arrived at New Chitose Airport in Hokkaido aboard the Thai royal aircraft. The cockpit footage shows who landed it: the queen herself. She had flown roughly seven hours from Bangkok after being invited to Sapporo for the Women's Asia Championship in ice hockey, where she is due to watch games and present medals and trophies. Once on the ground, she also drove herself to her hotel.
This is not a one-off photo op. According to the Thai royal household and others cited in the reports, she began her career as a flight attendant with Thai Airways, later joined the military and earned a pilot license, and has served as co-pilot on the king's overseas trips. Her total flight time is over 1,000 hours. On October 8 she flew a fighter jet, including solo flight training, reportedly making her the first sitting queen in the world to fly one.
Several Japanese news programs ran the landing, and the reactions quickly turned into a casting session for anime heroines and video game aces. The comments below are gathered from four of those news clips.
Comments
The people of Thailand must be so proud!
タイ国民は誇りだろうね！
I assumed it’d be some little private plane, but that’s a B737?? I’m gonna fall for her (The royal aircraft is a Boeing 737-800, a full-size airliner.)
自家用かと思いきやB737じゃないか、ほれてまうわ
Stepping gracefully onto the tarmac with her hair in an elegant updo: “Today I flew the royal aircraft here myself, darling”… Haaah, simply divine ❤
夜会巻きで優雅に地上に降り立ち、「今日は、王室専用機を自分で操縦してまいりましたの」… はあ〜、素敵ですわん❤
A queen who flies fighter jets 😅 never heard of it, never seen it 😅😅😅😅
戦闘機乗る王妃様😅聞いたことねぇ見たこともねぇ😅😅😅😅
That’s the hardest fighter jet in the world to shoot down lol
世界で最も撃ち落としづらい戦闘機じゃねえか笑
Out of nowhere she’s flying a plane in her regular clothes. Because she used to be a flight attendant?? Makes no sense. Fighter jets too??? Then at the end she drives the car. And she’s the queen. What is going on???
いきなり私服で飛行機を操縦 元客室乗務員だからって意味不明 戦闘機も操縦？？？ 最後は車も運転 そして王妃 どーなっているのだ？？？
Not the Rampaging Shogun, the Rampaging Queen 💪🥺💪 (A riff on Abarenbō Shōgun, a long-running samurai TV drama about a shogun who sneaks out to fight villains himself.)
暴れん坊将軍ならぬ暴れん坊王妃💪🥺💪
The Queen of Thailand Is Way Too Overpowered 😂👍 (Phrased like the title of a Japanese light novel, where overpowered heroes are a genre of their own.)
タイの王妃がチート過ぎる件。😂👍
If this were an anime, she’d be the type who doesn’t actually need protecting and is secretly stronger than the main character
多分アニメだったら実は守られなくても主人公より強い系だ
But day to day she lets the hero and her retainers look good, the kind of princess who “kindly allows herself to be protected”…
でも普段は主人公や周りの従者を立てて「守られてくれる」系お姫様だ…
Flight attendant → joins the army → army general → queen. What a résumé
CA→陸軍入隊→陸軍大将→王妃 経歴が凄いな
Her rise is so Narō it actually caught me off guard (Shōsetsuka ni Narō is a huge Japanese web-novel site, and “Narō-ish” means a too-convenient climb to the top.)
成り上がりの仕方がなろうすぎてびっくり
Queen: “Sawasdee kaa” (fires missile) (Sawasdee ka is the Thai greeting used by women.)
王妃「サワディカー（ミサイル発射）」
Thai Air Force: “Our forces are on the verge of collapse!”
Queen: “Move. I’ll do it.”
タイ空軍「我が軍、壊滅寸前です！」 王妃「どけ、私がやる。」
Reminds me of Peach in the movie (In The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Princess Peach does most of the fighting herself.)
映画のピーチ姫思い出した
Nausicaä (The princess heroine of Studio Ghibli’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, who flies her own glider.)
ナウシカ
Kushana works too (The armored princess-general from the same film.)
クシャナでもいけるね
Her Highness can’t fly, though
殿下は空飛べんぞ
She’s way too otokomae
男前すぎる
Nah, I’d spell it with the macho kanji.
いや、漢前だと思う。
男前漢前
Seeing it used like this, otokomae really is a lopsided word
こうみると男前っていびつな言葉だなぁ
Flight attendant: “Is there a pilot among the passengers?”
Queen: “Airliners and Gripens, a little.” (The Gripen is a Swedish-built fighter jet.)
CA[「お客様の中にパイロットの方はいらっしゃいますでしょうか？」 王妃「旅客機とグリペンなら少々」
Me, I get pretty nervous driving my tractor on banks and slopes, and then I hear the Queen of Thailand zips around in fighter jets. I can’t let her beat me… I want to till every last inch of this country!! Building fertile soil is my dream and my goal!!
私しゃトラクターの運転で、法面や傾斜で不安感がそこそこある中で、タイ王国の王妃は戦闘機を乗り回すと聞き、負けていられないと…私は国土を余すことなく耕したいです!!肥沃な土壌を作ることが私の夢であり目標です!!
Sorry if this is rude, but it’s the hardest I’ve laughed all year. The cut from her dignified poise on the ground to the cockpit shot, I just can’t hold it together. She seems like a wonderful person
失礼なんだけど今年一番笑った 地上での燐としたお姿からの操縦席の画が本当に我慢できないです 素敵な方だと思います
I figured it’d be a Cessna or something, and then a plane about 10 times bigger than I imagined showed up lol. And she flies fighter jets too? Damn…
セスナとかそんくらいだと思ったら想像より10倍くらいデカいやつ出てきて草 それに戦闘機操縦するとかすげぇな…
Flying it in her normal outfit is way too funny lol
服装そのままで操縦してんのおもろすぎだろ笑
Thai-mpressive stuff 😆
タイしたもんだ😆
She gets the Thai-ko seal of approval!
タイ鼓判だね！
大したタイした
Saw it on Thai news: right after getting off the plane she left the airport driving a Maybach. I figured there’d be some navigator in the passenger seat, but it was a small dog.
タイのニュース見たら飛行機降りてすぐマイバッハ運転して空港去ってたよ。助手席は誰かナビゲーターの人がおるかと思いきや小型犬やった。
A queen who can’t fly is just a queen (A riff on the famous line from Studio Ghibli’s Porco Rosso about a pig who doesn’t fly.)
飛べない王妃はただの王妃だ
Which is still a queen lol
それでも王妃なのなw
Thailand to Hokkaido has to be at least 4 hours! I underestimated her.
タイから北海道って、4時間は掛かるぞ！ お見逸れしました。
It’s 6 to 7 hours lol
6時間から7時間かかりますw
Solo flight in a Gripen the other day → flies the royal 737-800 to Japan → gets into the driver’s seat of the Maybach sent to pick her up. Does she just love anything with an engine…?
先日グリペン単独操縦→王室専用737-800で来日→お迎えのマイバッハの運転席に座って運転 エンジンついた乗り物が好きなのか……？
A queen who takes “do it yourself” to an absurd level. Wow
自分のことは自分でやっちゃうレベルがスゴすぎる王妃 すげー
I thought she came in a fighter jet
戦闘機で来たのかと思った
Airspace violation
領空侵犯
Lt. Belenko lol (In 1976, Soviet pilot Viktor Belenko defected by landing his MiG-25 fighter at Hakodate Airport in Hokkaido.)
ベレンコ中尉w
Not that it matters, but why is the Thai queen coming to an ice hockey event?
どうでもいいけど、なんでタイ王妃がアイスホッケーに来るんだろう？
Apparently she was invited to the “2027 IIHF Women’s Asia Championship” being held in Sapporo, as the global ambassador for women’s ice hockey.
札幌で開催されているアイスホッケーの「2027 IIHF 女子アジア選手権」で、女子グローバルアンバサダーとして招かれたらしい。
My take
Elegant, yes, but mostly just plainly, honestly cool. It's so much that I actually laughed, out of sheer awe. And it's easy to picture how proud people in Thailand must be feeling.
Source & translation note
Comments loosely translated for tone. Reactions collected from Togetter and X threads.
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