Far Eastern Air Transport Corp (FAT, 遠東航空) is to halt operations from today due to long-standing losses and difficulty repaying loans, company vice president Huang Yu-chi (黃育祺) said yesterday.
The 62-year-old airline, which launched Christmas sales two days ago, made the announcement after it could not honor interest and principal payments on two short-term loans, Huang told a news conference in Taipei.
“The situation unfolded so suddenly that employees feel like they are in a nightmare,” he said, adding that management “are shocked, too.”
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
FAT, which has 1,008 employees, would cancel all flights from today, he said.
It had notified the Taipei Department of Labor, he said.
An internal letter indicated that FAT planned to lay off its staff, Huang said, adding that it would do its best to protect employees’ rights while discussing labor issues with regulators.
FAT, which operated 62 routes to 47 destinations, focused on operations in the outlying counties of Penghu and Kinmen, as well as second-tier cities in China, including Hefei, Xiamen and Haikou, company data showed.
The closure came as no surprise to people in the aviation industry, a manager at another airline said on the condition of anonymity.
Although competition in the nation’s aviation market is tense, FAT’s failure has a lot to do with bad business strategy, he said.
FAT used old aircraft, which have poor fuel efficiency, the manager said, adding that it depended heavily on cooperation with travel agencies to offer charter services for groups, which has a low profit margin.
The average age of FAT’s fleet of 11 jets was 18.6 last year, much older than the industry average of 7.7, Civil Aeronautics Administration data showed.
The Taipei MRT is open all night tonight following New Year’s Eve festivities, and is offering free rides from nearby Green Line stations. Taipei’s 2025 New Year’s Eve celebrations kick off at Taipei City Hall Square tonight, with performances from the boy band Energy, the South Korean girl group Apink, and singers Gigi Leung (梁詠琪) and Faith Yang (楊乃文). Taipei 101’s annual New Year’s firework display follows at midnight, themed around Taiwan’s Premier12 baseball championship. Estimates say there will be about 200,000 people in attendance, which is more than usual as this year’s celebrations overlap with A-mei’s (張惠妹) concert at Taipei Dome. There are
LOOKING FOR WHEELS: The military is seeking 8x8 single-chassis vehicles to test the new missile and potentially replace the nation’s existing launch vehicles, the source said Taiwan is developing a hypersonic missile based on the Ching Tien (擎天) supersonic cruise missile, and a Czech-made truck has been tentatively selected as its launch vehicle, a source said yesterday. The Ching Tien, formerly known as Yun Feng (雲峰, “Cloud Peak”), is a domestically developed missile with a range of 1,200km to 2,000km being deployed in casemate-type positions as of last month, an official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The hypersonic missile to be derived from the Ching Tien would feature improved range and a mobile launch platform, while the latter would most likely be a 12x12 single chassis
UP AND DOWN: The route would include a 16.4km underground section from Zuoying to Fongshan and a 9.5km elevated part from Fongshan to Pingtung Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday confirmed a project to extend the high-speed rail (HSR) to Pingtung County through Kaohsiung. Cho made the announcement at a ceremony commemorating the completion of a dome at Kaohsiung Main Station. The Ministry of Transportation and Communications approved the HSR expansion in 2019 using a route that branches off a line from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung’s Zuoying District (左營). The project was ultimately delayed due to a lack of support for the route. The Zuoying route would have trains stop at the Zuoying Station and return to a junction before traveling southward to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝).
Parts of the nation, including in the south, could experience temperatures as low as 7°C early tomorrow morning, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. A strong continental cold air mass coupled with the effect of radiative cooling would bring cold weather to several northern cities and counties, and could even affect areas as far south as Tainan early tomorrow, the CWA said. Keelung, Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan, and Hsinchu, Miaoli and Yilan counties would experience temperatures below 10°C until this evening, according to cold surge advisories issued by the weather agency. The weather across the nation is forecast to remain
RSS