China Airlines (華航) and EVA Airways Corp (長榮) have received permission from the nation's civil aviation regulator to extend a surcharge by six months to shield their earnings from surging fuel prices.
China Airlines and EVA can keep their surcharges at US$5 per passenger on domestic flights and US$13 per ticket on long-haul flights until March 15 next year, said Chen Chia-li (
"We applied to extend the surcharge to cover high fuel costs," said Roger Han (
"We'll cancel it if oil prices fall to normal levels," he said, without elaborating.
The price of jet fuel surged to a 14-year record of US$55.95 a barrel on Aug. 20 and traded at US$50.28 a barrel yesterday in Singapore, according to oil pricing service Platts.
High oil prices have undermined the profits of China Airlines and its competitors. Fuel costs may cause combined losses of as much as US$6 billion on airlines' international routes, the International Air Transport Association said last month.
China Airlines in March said it fixed 70 percent of its fuel consumption for this year to help avoid losses from increased prices. Last year it hedged about 60 percent of its fuel needs.
"Even though we hedged, it wasn't enough and we're still exposed to high fuel prices," Han said.
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
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained