Far Eastern Air Transport Corp (FAT, 遠航) has agreed to lease one of its Boeing passenger aircraft and 52 crew members to Air Macau for at least a year starting from Aug. 1, executives from the two companies confirmed yesterday.
Air Macau needs the aircraft to bolster its fleet which plys the route between Taiwan and Macau. The airline expects its capacity to be raised to 105 flights per week from the current 90, starting next month, said a company executive in Macau.
For its part, Far Eastern was keen to sign the deal in order to take up the slack on domestic routes, after the government cut the number of local flights due to overcapacity on the nation's four domestic carriers, said a source at the Taipei-based company.
Both executives requested anonymity citing conditions in the deal that prohibited either company revealing financial details of the agreement.
The aircraft, a single-aisle Boeing 757 and aircrew personnel numbering 52 -- including both pilots and stewards -- will be leased by Air Macau to fly mainly the hugely popular routes between Macau and Taipei and Kaohsiung, said the Air Macau executive.
"We have very high frequency between Taiwan and Macau, which is set to increase and we simply need more aircraft," said the executive, adding that leasing aircraft instead of buying them was cheaper and more flexible.
The routes between Macau and Taiwan account for over 75 percent of Air Macau's revenue, said the executive.
According to data provided by Taiwan's Civil Aeronautics Administration, Macau was the third most popular foreign destination behind Hong Kong and Tokyo in 1999, with 1.25 million people visiting.
Officials at Taiwan's Civil Aeronautics Administration said it had approved Far Eastern's application to lease their aircraft but was still evaluating the request by Air Macau.
The ability of the two companies to broker a commercial agreement stands in stark contrast to the debacle last month over the renegotiation of the air link agreement between Hong Kong and Taiwan.
A disagreement between Beijing and Taipei over whether the talks should be official or private forced the postponement of renegotiation to the end of the year.
Air links between Taiwan and Macau are negotiated separately, with the latest agreement hammered out smoothly between Air Macau and a private Taiwan aviation industry group last November.
However Mainland Affairs Council vice chairman Cheng Ming-tong (
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