EVA Airways Corp (
"The recent decline in fuel costs will help our profit for next year rather than helping turn around our finances this year," EVA Airways senior vice president Nieh Kuo-wei (
Nieh made the remark on the sideline of a press conference launching EVA's Taipei-to-Mumbai passenger service.
For the first three quarters of the year, EVA Airways saw its net loss climb to NT$2.32 billion (US$70.7 million), or NT$0.63 per share, because of high oil costs.
During the January to September period, the airline spent NT$5 billion to NT$6 billion more on fuel than it did during the same period last year, Nieh said.
Sales were certain increase in the brisk passenger and cargo sectors, Nieh said.
EVA posted sales growth of 7.96 percent to NT$77.97 billion for the first 10 months of the year from a year ago.
The deficit has had an impact on the airline's aircraft procurement plan. It had planned to buy 10 Boeing 777-200 cargo planes in June last year, on top of 12 Boeing 777-300ER and three Boeing 777-200 LR passenger jets it had previously ordered.
But the airline has now decided to change the two Boeing 777 passenger jets on order to Boeing 777 freighters. It is also converting six of the Boeing 747-400 Combi and two Boeing 747-400 passenger planes in its fleet to cargo aircraft, Nieh said.
The conversion is being done by Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd and the first converted cargo plane will be delivered in April, Nieh said.
EVA Airways' affiliate Evergreen Aviation Technologies Corp (EGAT,
He refused to reveal the value of the deal.
Meanwhile, the airline is banking on growing traffic on the Taipei-Mumbai route with its launch of direct flights to India's largest and most populous city.
India has become one of the most popular travel destinations for people in Taiwan, said Alok Dimri, vice chairman of the India-Taipei Association, at the press conference.
The association has issued 28,000 visas to Taiwanese travelers so far this year and expects to process another 2,000 before the end of this year.
In addition to Taiwanese tourists and Indians working in Taiwan, the flights will also serve business passengers transiting from North America, whom the airline expects to fill half the seats on the route, Nieh said.
EVA Airways has adjusted the schedules of some of its flights from Los Angeles and San Francisco to shorten the Taipei transit time for Mumbai-bound passengers to about two hours, he said.
EVA Airways launched a cargo service between Taipei and Mumbai in 1999, followed by Taipei-New Delhi cargo flights in 2003.
China Airlines (
GROWING OWINGS: While Luxembourg and China swapped the top three spots, the US continued to be the largest exposure for Taiwan for the 41st consecutive quarter The US remained the largest debtor nation to Taiwan’s banking sector for the 41st consecutive quarter at the end of September, after local banks’ exposure to the US market rose more than 2 percent from three months earlier, the central bank said. Exposure to the US increased to US$198.896 billion, up US$4.026 billion, or 2.07 percent, from US$194.87 billion in the previous quarter, data released by the central bank showed on Friday. Of the increase, about US$1.4 billion came from banks’ investments in securitized products and interbank loans in the US, while another US$2.6 billion stemmed from trust assets, including mutual funds,
AI TALENT: No financial details were released about the deal, in which top Groq executives, including its CEO, would join Nvidia to help advance the technology Nvidia Corp has agreed to a licensing deal with artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Groq, furthering its investments in companies connected to the AI boom and gaining the right to add a new type of technology to its products. The world’s largest publicly traded company has paid for the right to use Groq’s technology and is to integrate its chip design into future products. Some of the start-up’s executives are leaving to join Nvidia to help with that effort, the companies said. Groq would continue as an independent company with a new chief executive, it said on Wednesday in a post on its Web
RESPONSE: The Japanese Ministry of Finance might have to intervene in the currency markets should the yen keep weakening toward the 160 level against the US dollar Japan’s chief currency official yesterday sent a warning on recent foreign exchange moves, after the yen weakened against the US dollar following Friday last week’s Bank of Japan (BOJ) decision. “We’re seeing one-directional, sudden moves especially after last week’s monetary policy meeting, so I’m deeply concerned,” Japanese Vice Finance Minister for International Affairs Atsushi Mimura told reporters. “We’d like to take appropriate responses against excessive moves.” The central bank on Friday raised its benchmark interest rate to the highest in 30 years, but Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda chose to keep his options open rather than bolster the yen,
Even as the US is embarked on a bitter rivalry with China over the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI), Chinese technology is quietly making inroads into the US market. Despite considerable geopolitical tensions, Chinese open-source AI models are winning over a growing number of programmers and companies in the US. These are different from the closed generative AI models that have become household names — ChatGPT-maker OpenAI or Google’s Gemini — whose inner workings are fiercely protected. In contrast, “open” models offered by many Chinese rivals, from Alibaba (阿里巴巴) to DeepSeek (深度求索), allow programmers to customize parts of the software to suit their
RSS