The Far East Air Transport Corp (遠航) has slammed the decision to award additional flights along the Hong Kong route to rival Mandarin Airlines (華信) as unfair and denied it used any underhanded political tactics to sway negotiators.
Far East, which was passed over on the weekend when Hong Kong and Taiwan negotiators awarded 16 new weekly flights to China Airlines Co's (華航) subsidiary, Mandarin, said in a statement the evaluation of prospective airlines was too narrow.
"It was regretful that the government only considered the airlines' services to outlying islands and didn't pay closer attention to the companies' safety records and service and maintenance performances," the statement said.
TAIPEI TIMES FILE PHOTO
In deciding which airline should be awarded the 16 weekly flights -- which were earmarked for China Airlines before that airline was knocked out of consideration by the May 25 crash of one of its planes -- the government claimed it examined all these factors equally.
Jan Jyh-horng (詹志宏), director of research and planning at the Mainland Affairs Council and one of the Taiwan negotiators, admitted that after the Civil Aeronautics Administration and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications completed their evaluation, all six of the nation's airlines qualified.
Jan said that Mandarin's lone servicing of the loss-making routes to Chimei Island and Wangan Island -- both part of the Penghu or Pescadore Archipeligo, with populations of under 2,000 each -- made it a prime choice for the extra routes.
Mandarin flies four times per week between Kaohsiung and Wangan, 12 times per week between Kaohsiung and Chimei and one round-trip per day between Makung and Chimei.
Flying the routes incur heavy losses for the airline, which operates them literally as a form of community service on behalf of the government.
Far East claimed that, due to the small size of the airports on the tiny islets and its own lack of small-enough aircraft, it isn't able to service the routes. It claims that, by making this type of "community service" the main factor in the government's deliberations, the final decision was unfair.
Besides highlighting what it perceives as inequities in the Hong Kong air-route decision, Far Eastern also attempted to dispel accusations circulating in the local media which claim the company used underhand tactics to sway the decision makers.
While not naming Far East, Jan told the Taipei Times that a certain Taiwanese airline had used its influence with lawmakers and officials in Beijing to sway Hong Kong authorities to push negotiators into awarding it the new routes.
"[The company] used legislators and Beijing's interference to make Hong Kong select them," Jan said.
"They used politics to go around the law. This kind of company shouldn't exist in our society," he said.
Far East, which was seen as the likely beneficiary, denied that it had pressured the Taiwan government or attempted to influence the decisions of the Hong Kong and Beijing authorities.
"At the beginning of the year Far East applied twice to the appropriate government agencies -- in accordance with the related laws -- for permission to be included for consideration to operate the Hong Kong-to-Taiwan route," the statement said.
"The company never pressured the government nor does it have any channels to influence the opinions of the Chinese or Hong Kong governments regarding Taiwan carriers," it added.
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