Flights between Taipei and Kaohsiung will be maintained for another month, despite a request from Mandarin Airlines (華信航空) to halt the service.
The Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) has asked Mandarin Airlines to provide the service for at least one more month, until the end of next month, because demand for air travel in Kaohsiung and Pingtung counties remains high, said CAA director-general Lee Lung-wen (李龍文) on Thursday, adding that “this is why the CAA has not approved the carrier’s request to halt the service.”
“Taipei-Kaohsiung flights will be maintained through September,” Lee said.
Seat occupancy on the Taipei-Kaohsiung route still averages around 50 percent, he said.
Meanwhile, Mandarin Airlines, the sole operator on the route, announced that from today it would only offer a single daily round-trip flight between the two largest cities in Taiwan, down from the previous 14 round-trip flights per week.
The number of flights on the Taipei-Kaohsiung route exceeded 100 per day during peak years, when it was the most profitable domestic route.
A Mandarin Airlines company executive said a passenger load factor lower than 60 percent makes it very difficult for a carrier to maintain operations.
Air travel on the western Taiwan corridor has been hard-hit by the high-speed train system that went into service in January last year.
In the face of competition from the bullet train, airlines have progressively cut the number of flights between Taipei and Taichung and between Taipei, Chiayi and Tainan.
In 1997, passengers took 18 million flights inside Taiwan, but the figure decreased to 8 million in 2006 and to 4 million last year, statistics show.
Industry sources predict that the number will drop even further this year.
In another development, UNI Airways Corp (立榮航空), which flies from Taipei to Pingtung and Hengchun, is considering canceling flights on the two routes. But Lee said the CAA would not allow the airline to stop flying the routes, out of fear that the local airports might be forced to close as a result.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) and Chunghwa Telecom yesterday confirmed that an international undersea cable near Keelung Harbor had been cut by a Chinese ship, the Shunxin-39, a freighter registered in Cameroon. Chunghwa Telecom said the cable had its own backup equipment, and the incident would not affect telecommunications within Taiwan. The CGA said it dispatched a ship under its first fleet after receiving word of the incident and located the Shunxin-39 7 nautical miles (13km) north of Yehliu (野柳) at about 4:40pm on Friday. The CGA demanded that the Shunxin-39 return to seas closer to Keelung Harbor for investigation over the
National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology (NKUST) yesterday promised it would increase oversight of use of Chinese in course materials, following a social media outcry over instances of simplified Chinese characters being used, including in a final exam. People on Threads wrote that simplified Chinese characters were used on a final exam and in a textbook for a translation course at the university, while the business card of a professor bore the words: “Taiwan Province, China.” Photographs of the exam, the textbook and the business card were posted with the comments. NKUST said that other members of the faculty did not see
The Taipei City Government yesterday said contractors organizing its New Year’s Eve celebrations would be held responsible after a jumbo screen played a Beijing-ran television channel near the event’s end. An image showing China Central Television (CCTV) Channel 3 being displayed was posted on the social media platform Threads, sparking an outcry on the Internet over Beijing’s alleged political infiltration of the municipal government. A Taipei Department of Information and Tourism spokesman said event workers had made a “grave mistake” and that the Television Broadcasts Satellite (TVBS) group had the contract to operate the screens. The city would apply contractual penalties on TVBS
A new board game set against the backdrop of armed conflict around Taiwan is to be released next month, amid renewed threats from Beijing, inviting players to participate in an imaginary Chinese invasion 20 years from now. China has ramped up military activity close to Taiwan in the past few years, including massing naval forces around the nation. The game, titled 2045, tasks players with navigating the troubles of war using colorful action cards and role-playing as characters involved in operations 10 days before a fictional Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That includes members of the armed forces, Chinese sleeper agents and pro-China politicians
RSS