China Airlines (CAL, 中華航空) has faced problems with cargo planes carrying an image of Taiwan when flying to China and Hong Kong, Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said on Friday.
Local media reported that the airline’s latest cargo aircraft no longer bears an image of Taiwan outlined in the letter “C” of the word “Cargo.”
Su made the comment when responding to a question from Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chiu Chih-wei (邱志偉) about the matter at the Legislative Yuan’s plenary session.
Photo courtesy of China Airlines
Adding the Taiwan image onto the company’s aircraft fuselages was discussed in 2020 when confusion arose over the origin of medical equipment donations sent to other countries at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Foreign media had been attributing Taiwan’s donations to China, as the donations were delivered by China Airlines.
Officials at the time said that the International Civil Aviation Organization and other international bodies would not allow Taiwan to rename its flagship carrier without facing flight restrictions, so a compromise was made to repaint the fuselages with the title “China Airlines” using smaller letters.
The new design also contained an image of Taiwan proper, which caused issues when flying cargo to and from China and Hong Kong, the Chinese-language United Daily News reported on Thursday, adding that a new cargo plane procured by CAL last month does not carry the new design.
“We worked hard on the repainting of the fuselages, but the new design made flying to certain places more difficult. It is clear that we still have work to do on this,” Su said on Friday.
“We want to fly to places, and we want Taiwan to be visible. If we cannot fly anywhere, then Taiwan will be even less visible than it is now,” he said.
Chiu yesterday said that as a national airline, CAL symbolizes the nation and it must strive to better represent Taiwan.
CAL’s trans-Pacific routes account for 31 percent of its revenue and its Southeast Asia routes make up 27 percent, he said.
“Comparatively, its China and Hong Kong routes account for the least, at 23 percent and 3 percent respectively,” Chiu said.
Chiu suggested that CAL find new routes outside of China, or fly to China using its subsidiary, Mandarin Airlines.
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