China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) is choosing between Boeing Co’s yet-to-be certified 777X and the largest variant of Airbus SE’s A350 as it looks to retire existing long-haul jets, its president Kao Shing-hwang (高星潢) said.
“We are looking for a new fleet” to replace the 10 Boeing 777-300ERs it currently operates, Kao told Bloomberg Television in an interview.
Taiwan’s main airline is exploring Boeing’s upgraded 777 or the Airbus A350-1000, Kao said, without specifying a timetable for the upgrade.
Photo: CNA
Boeing previously won a deal for 16 787-9 Dreamliners from the airline. At the Paris Air Show in June, it ordered eight more jets, and converted six to larger high-capacity planes.
The US planemaker could do with a boost to a sluggish order book for its delayed 777X flagship jet, even as its smaller 787 remains popular.
Meanwhile, Airbus has continued to pick up a steady stream of orders for its largest twin-aisle aircraft, most recently from Qantas Airways Ltd.
Kao said the company would have a better sense of the required units once the number of 787-10s is decided.
The airline operates more than 85 aircraft, including 23 freighter jets.
China Airlines’ 10 777-300ERs average about 8.3 years in age. It also flies the Airbus A350-900.
The government-backed company has benefited from higher fares as air travel comes back.
Kao said he predicts that ticket prices would continue to rise, not least as charges mount for more sustainable flying.
China Airlines competes against two other Taiwanese carriers, EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) and Starlux Airlines Co (星宇航空), in an increasingly competitive aviation market vying for regional and long-haul travelers. It also controls Taiwan’s only budget carrier, Tigerair Taiwan Ltd (台灣虎航), which recently completed an initial public offering.
The carrier was among a few around the world that remained profitable during the COVID-19 pandemic. Revenue last year was just shy of its pre-pandemic levels, driven by strong air cargo sales.
Passenger flights still remain at about half of 2019 levels, and the company does not expect to return to normal until 2025, Kao said.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.