US carrier Northwest Airlines Inc (NWA) yesterday resumed daily flight services between Taipei and Tokyo, providing an additional choice for local passengers bound for Japan or the US.
Using the medium-range narrow-body Boeing 757 aircraft, NWA’s Taipei-Tokyo service is available daily, with flights leaving Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at 8:35am. The return flight arrives at 10:10pm.
NWA’s resumption of the flights, which were suspended in 2004 after an outbreak of SARS, bucked the trend at a time when most of the world’s carriers are cutting flights as a result of skyrocketing oil prices.
However, Raymond Chang (建仁), president of NWA’s Taiwan operations, said that, in an era of high oil prices, replacing long-haul cross-continental flights with transit flights using short or medium-racnge aircraft has become increasingly popular to offset the price impact.
Chang said NWA’s policy was to collect US-bound passengers from all Asian cities, including Taipei, in Tokyo, from where they can be flown to many US destinations at much lower cost than taking nonstop, long-distance flights to the US from various Asian airports.
The airline is following the same policy in the opposite direction — amassing Asia-bound passengers from the US in Tokyo and then transporting them to other Asian cities via regional carriers, he said.
“Passengers will spend probably one to two more hours traveling from Asia to America, but their tickets will be much cheaper,” Chang said.
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