The nation's domestic airlines, including Far Eastern Air Transport Corp (
The increase of about 4.5 percent, approved by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, will affect routes connecting major cities, including Taipei and Kaohsiung, said George Lee (李仲榮), deputy director of the Civil Aeronautics Administration.
"Oil prices have surged so much that airlines are having problems operating," Lee said yesterday.
Jet fuel prices in Taiwan have more than doubled since the last changes in domestic airfares in 1999, Lee said.
Far Eastern and the other airlines have been hurt by higher fuel prices, which, according to the administration, account for about 15 percent to 25 percent of airlines' costs.
Global airlines may report an industrywide loss of US$5.5 billion this year, the International Air Transport Association said earlier this year, basing its estimate on an average oil price of US$43 a barrel.
Far Eastern Air had a loss of NT$133.7 million (US$4.3 million) for the first quarter, compared with a profit of NT$30.7 million a year earlier, according to the Taiwan Stock Exchange Web site.
The company competes with TransAsia Airways Corp (復興), Mandarin Airlines (華信) and UNI Airways Corp (立榮) on domestic routes.
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TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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