Passenger occupancy on EVA Airways Corp’s (長榮航空) cross-strait flights reached 90 percent last month and demand is expected to remain strong, a company spokesman said yesterday.
Spokesman Nieh Kuo-wei (聶國維) said the launch of cross-strait weekend charter flights had not attracted many Chinese last year, as Chinese found flights to be inconvenient and infrequent. The occupancy rate last year was between 60 percent and 70 percent.
“Convenience is the most important thing [for passengers],” Nieh said.
However, since cross-strait daily chartered flights were inaugurated on Dec. 15, the increase in the number of flights and their convenience have begun to attract more interest from passengers.
The occupancy rate on flights to Beijing, Hangzhou and Shanghai all exceeded 90 percent last month, but China-based Taiwanese businesspeople were still the major users of the cross-strait charter flight services, Nieh said.
“Demand for cross-strait flights exceeds supply,” Nieh said, adding that demand appeared to be unaffected by the financial crisis and was expected to continue growing.
Nieh said EVA Airways, the nation’s second-largest air carrier, hoped the government would discuss expanding the number of flights with its Chinese counterpart during the next round of talks.
Domestic air carrier UNI Airways Corp (立榮航空), a subsidiary of EVA Airways, said yesterday the number of Chinese who visited Taiwan via a third destination reached 7,000 last month, adding that the number could double in July or August after China announced in February it would increase the number of travel agencies authorized to arrange tour groups to Taiwan to 146 from the initial 33.
“As a result, UNI Airways plans to increase the number of flights between Taipei and Kinmen, and Kaohsiung and Kinmen, by 20 percent in June to meet the expected increase in demand for our flight services,” UNI Airways chief executive vice president Chen Shyong-jyh (陳雄智) said.
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) expects its addressable market to grow by a low single-digit percentage this year, lower than the overall foundry industry’s 15 percent expansion and the global semiconductor industry’s 10 percent growth, the contract chipmaker said yesterday after reporting the worst profit in four-and-a-half years in the fourth quarter of last year. Growth would be fueled by demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers, a moderate recovery in consumer electronics and an increase in semiconductor content, UMC said. “UMC’s goal is to outgrow our addressable market while maintaining our structural profitability,” UMC copresident Jason Wang (王石) told an online earnings
Gudeng Precision Industrial Co (家登精密), the sole extreme ultraviolet (EUV) pod supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), is aiming to expand revenue to NT$10 billion (US$304.8 million) this year, as it expects the artificial intelligence (AI) boom to drive demand for wafer delivery pods and pods used in advanced packaging technology. That suggests the firm’s revenue could grow as much as 53 percent this year, after it posted a 28.91 percent increase to NT$6.55 billion last year, exceeding its 20 percent growth target. “We usually set an aggressive target internally to drive further growth. This year, our target is to
The TAIEX ended the Year of the Dragon yesterday up about 30 percent, led by contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電). The benchmark index closed up 225.40 points, or 0.97 percent, at 23,525.41 on the last trading session of the Year of the Dragon before the Lunar New Year holiday ushers in the Year of the Snake. During the Year of the Dragon, the TAIEX rose 5,429.34 points, the highest ever, while the 30 percent increase in the year was the second-highest behind only a 30.84 percent gain in the Year of the Rat from Jan. 25, 2020, to Feb.
Cryptocurrencies gave a lukewarm reception to US President Donald Trump’s first policy moves on digital assets, notching small gains after he commissioned a report on regulation and a crypto reserve. Bitcoin has been broadly steady since Trump took office on Monday and was trading at about US$105,000 yesterday as some of the euphoria around a hoped-for revolution in cryptocurrency regulation ebbed. Smaller cryptocurrency ether has likewise had a fairly steady week, although was up 5 percent in the Asia day to US$3,420. Bitcoin had been one of the most spectacular “Trump trades” in financial markets, gaining 50 percent to break above US$100,000 and
RSS