Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) Director-General Lee Long-wen (李龍文) says that the agency’s plan to help domestic airlines cope with a decline in passengers would expire at the end of this year.
However, the agency will assess changes over the next six months to see if the plan needs to be adjusted, he said yesterday.
Starting last July, the CAA gave domestic airlines a 50 percent discount on landing fees and a 10 percent discount for rental of facilities and land at airports. The plan was extended to the end of this year to help airlines cope with soaring oil prices. The government would assist the airlines in maintaining their operations, Lee said, but they could not rely solely on its assistance.
When asked if Mandarin Airlines would be allowed to halt its Taipei-Kaohsiung flights, Lee said the CAA had not made a decision on the matter.
Uni Air and TransAsia Airways have been allowed to discontinue their Taipei-Kaohsiung routes.
Lee said that the government was willing to push for airline mergers, but the airlines would have to be interested in merging.
He made the comments after a ceremony yesterday when he received the official seal from his predecessor Billy Chang (張國政).
Chang retired after serving as CAA director-general for 13 years. He was the only CAA director to have served as an Air Force pilot. The government also sent him to command an air force squadron in North Yemen during that country’s civil war in the 1980s.
Lee served previously as the director-general of the Taichung Port Office.
“I also served as director-general in the Department of Aviation and Navigation, so I am not unfamiliar with the CAA’s business,” he said.
Lee said his first task was to deal with Far Eastern Air Transport, whose operations were suspended.
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