The switch by the nation's carriers to Tokyo's expanded Narita Airport today will contribute to a cut in annual revenue for China Airlines Co (
Japan's international gateway, 80km from downtown Tokyo, opened 25 years ago with only a single runway because of disputes with local farmers. The new landing strip will be too short for bigger, long-range planes because of the spat.
While capacity will expand with the new runway, the allocation of the new landing slots favors regional carriers serving shorter routes in Asia, cutting the slot share of US airlines to Narita to 30 percent from 34 percent.
However, in switching to Narita from Haneda Airport from today, EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) will see its slots jump from two to 14 per week, while arch rival China Airlines will only gain one extra flight shifting to 22 per week.
EVA and China Airlines are the only international airlines to fly into Haneda due to political pressure from China after Japan switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing.
The weekly aviation magazine Flight International reported earlier this month that increased competition from domestic rival EVA and other regional airlines along the new Taiwan-Japan route and a reconfigured route between Hong Kong and Taiwan would eat into company revenue.
As a new air deal between Hong Kong and Taiwan is expect to grant EVA up to 35 of the 45 to 49 new flights to the Chinese territory.
China Airlines, which has dominated the route along with Cathay Pacific (國泰), will again see a chunk taken out of its revenue, Flight International reported.
The Hong Kong route accounts for almost 20 percent of China Airlines' profit.
China Airlines won't be the only carrier to feel the effects of expanded capacity at Narita. US airlines are also facing revenue challenges as regional carriers were favored when landing slots were allocated.
``We originally requested two extra slots a day but we only got one, so you can say we aren't satisfied with the result,'' said Hideki Isayama, a spokesman for United Airlines Inc, last month.
United Airlines will emerge with a 7.4 percent share of the slots, or 224 flights a week, after the new runway opens, down from 8.5 percent now.
Northwest Airlines Corp, the biggest of the US carriers flying to Narita, will see its share of slots shrink 2 percentage points to 11 percent, or 350 flights a week.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to