The origins of Bangkok Airways can be traced back to 1968 and a company known as Sahakol Air, which was initially set an air taxi service operating a Tradewind, a twin-engine, ten-seat aircraft during the Vietnam War. The assignments came from Overseas International Construction Company (OICC), an American construction company known as United States Operations Mission (USOM) and a number of other organizations engaged in oil and natural gas exploration in the Gulf of Thailand.