Local airlines have sold fewer than one-third of seats on their landmark chartered flights to China as rigid schedules and the late start dampened interest, a Taiwan business body said yesterday.
Six airlines were granted special permission to fly to China for the first time since the 1949 civil war. About 500 of the 1,600 tickets on offer were sold yesterday, said Xie Li-jun, secretary-general of Shanghai's Taiwan Businessmen's Association.
Ticket sales for the 16 round-trip flights, a once-off service to help Taiwan business people get home for the Lunar New Year holiday in February, began on Jan. 8 and close on Wednesday.
Xie said 200 people had crowded into a small makeshift ticket office in the association's downtown Shanghai office when sales began, but only a handful of customers came yesterday.
"It's not below or above our expectations. Remember, it's the first time we're doing this," Xie said. "Most people were quite understanding that approval came a bit late and we couldn't get the news out in time."
Most travlers had booked their flights way in advance to avoid the holiday crush. The cheapest tickets on the chartered planes cost 3,700 yuan (US$447), about 20 percent less than a regular flight, Xie said.
The chartered flights cut their journey of at least five hours by only an hour as the planes still have to fly through Hong Kong or Macau. Nevertheless, they mark a step toward regular, direct air links, previously banned by Taipei in the interest of national security.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”