Rebounding from a serious drop in profits last year, Taiwan's airlines are banking on the Lunar New Year holidays to restore profitability, industry officials said yesterday.
"Eyeing the soaring business brought on by outbound travellers for tourism purposes and inbound travellers for the Lunar New Year, we have started running 197 extra flights to serve these customers from mid-January to mid-February," Roger Han (韓梁中), spokesman for the national carrier China Airlines (華航), told the Taipei Times yesterday.
"These extra flights mainly fly to Japan and Hong Kong to carry Taiwanese travellers and China-based Taiwanese businessmen," Han said. "It will be no problem for the load factor to reach over 90 percent just prior to and after the New Year."
China Airlines, the nation's largest carrier, suffered a 50 percent decline in profits to NT$1.7 billion last year, owing to the impact on passenger flights caused by the outbreak of the SARS epidemic in the first half of last year.
The company is upbeat about its performance this year, predicting profits to rise to NT$3 billion on the strength of the economic recovery and an expected SARS-free 2004.
The company's major rival, EVA Airways Corp (
"We expect to create revenues exceeding NT$70 billion this year from NT$65.3 billion in the previous year, at least an increase of 10 percent," Nieh said, adding that, "the ongoing business boom and the addition of four Airbus 330-200 aircraft as well as two cargo aircraft to our fleet this year will allow us to boost our business."
In order to meet the soaring demand for transportation during the New Year period, EVA added 78 more flights from mid-January to mid-February, with Japan, Bali and Hong Kong the main destinations.
"According to our observations, neither SARS nor the recent bird flu appearing in some Asian countries has imposed a negative influence on outbound tourism during the New Year holidays," Nieh said.
However, fears of a potential SARS resurgence in China, where transparent information is lacking, has, to some extent, deterred people from travelling to China and Hong Kong, one tourism association executive said yesterday.
"Outbound travelers could amount to 600,000 [people] during the almost month-long New Year holidays alone, accounting for nearly 10 percent of the annual outbound traffic," said Johnny Tseng (曾勝海), chairman of Taipei Association for Travel Agencies (北市旅遊公會).
"We found that outbound tours to China and Hong Kong dropped 60 percent to 70 percent year-on-year because of people's concern of the possible resurgence of SARS in these areas," Tseng said.
Japan and some tropical islands are popular destinations, as people love to have hot spring baths and appreciate snow scenes in Japan or enjoy warm weather and beautiful beaches in Bali or Phuket.
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