Airlines eager to snap up new flights to South Korea

Taiwanese airlines are eager to apply for permission to operate flights on the newly-opened Taipei-Seoul route, as the nation's six carriers have seen bumper passenger volumes in their chartered flights to various destinations in South Korea.

"We look forward to providing the service on a regular basis to our customers," Joseph Wu (武志厚), general manager of media affairs at the nation's largest carrier, China Airlines (華航), said yesterday.

China Airlines has been providing one chartered flight from Taipei to Seoul per day since January last year, and the load factor -- the percentage of seats filled with paying passengers -- is above 80 percent, showing a vibrant business in the route, Wu said.

China Airlines is evaluating the number of regular flights in order to apply to the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA), as the administration is expected to start accepting carriers' applications to ply the Taipei-Seoul service soon.

Chou Su-hua (周素華), a division director at the CAA, said the administration will first allocate quotas to China Airlines and EVA Airways Corp (長榮), as an aviation agreement signed yesterday in Taipei stipulates that local carriers can only fly 18 flights with up to 4,500 seats a week.

"EVA Airways hopes to secure as many as nine flights," public relations specialist Eric Lin (林司忠) said yesterday in a phone interview.

Currently EVA Airways offers seven chartered flights a week from Taipei to Inchon, a smaller city near Seoul, with its load factor staying around 80 percent on average and hitting 90 percent during peak season, Lin said.

"Given the growing popularity of South Korean TV drama series among Taiwanese audiences, that country has become one of the most popular tourist sites, and thus we are confident that the route is profitable," Lin said.

China Airlines, EVA Airways and four other carriers fly a total of 41 weekly chartered flights to Seoul and other South Korean cities such as Pusan and Cheju.

Although the two largest carriers may carve up the flights and leave no quota to smaller carriers, Hanson Chang (張有朋), public relations senior manager of Far Eastern Air Transport Corp (遠東航空), said his company would also file an application.

Far Eastern Air currently sees good business on chartered flights from Kaohsiung to Seoul, and from Taipei to Pusan and Cheju, and therefore expects to earn more from flights between the two capital cities, Chang said.