Passengers traveling between Taipei and Kaohsiung may soon be able to book tickets from one of the four domestic carriers and fly with any of them, an airline official said yesterday.
The four carriers that operate domestic flights -- Mandarin Airlines (華信航空), UNI Airways (立榮航空), Far Eastern Air Transport (遠東航空) and TransAsia Airways (復興航空) -- have seen sales of Taipei-Kaohsiung flights slump since the launch of the high-speed railway this year.
Last Thursday, the four carriers applied to the Fair Trade Commission for permission to jointly operate the route to save costs and boost passenger figures, UNI Airways chief executive vice president Chen Shyong-jyh (陳雄智) said during a luncheon yesterday.
"The application is expected to be passed by the end of this month, so that we can carry out the joint operation mechanism from April 1 at the earliest," Chen said.
If the application is approved, passengers traveling on the route can book tickets from any of the four airlines and board a flight provided by any of the four operators at any time without incurring an extra charge.
As there are still some price differences among them, the four carriers have reached an agreement on splitting the bill, Chen said.
Since the launch of the bullet train, the load factor for UNI Airways' Taipei-Kaohsiung route has dropped from 80 percent to 65 percent, Chen said.
The four carriers have cut their number of flights by about 10 percent to stem losses, he said.
The carriers earlier sought to stop providing service on some unprofitable routes such as Taipei-Taichung and Taipei-Pingtung, but the applications were rejected by the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA).
UNI Airways chairman Tony Su (蘇宏義) said yesterday that he had plans for a worst-case scenario.
"I told my staff that we cannot count on the possibility that the performance of the high-speed rail will continue to deteriorate," Su said. "Eventually, more than 38 trains will be operating every day."
A solution to the problem will be to develop new routes, he said.
UNI Airways has been keen to explore international flights, starting with chartered flights to Japan last month and plans in the works for flights between Kaohsiung and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam in May.The airline also plans to apply for permission to implement regular flights between Kinmen and Penghu on the anticipation that an increasing number of Chinese tourists would visit Taiwan through the “small three links” (小三通).
EVA positive
Meanwhile, EVA Airways Corp (
But profits would be similar to last year because of expenditure on new aircraft, spokesman Nieh Kuo-wei (
EVA Airways saw sales increase 6.69 percent to NT$93.9 billion (US$2.85 billion) last year. The company has not yet revealed its financial report for last year. For the first three quarters of last year, EVA Airways lost NT$2.32 billion, or a deficit of NT$0.63 per share.
As fuel prices were still unstable, Nieh said the company was "conservative about margins" this year.
Of the combined 15 aircraft EVA ordered in 2000, four will join the fleet on flights to the US and Europe. After all the aircraft are delivered in 2009, the average age of EVA's fleet is estimated to fall from between six and seven years old, to between four and five, Nieh said.For the convenience of passengers, EVA is mulling a deal with Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC, 台灣高鐵) to provide services or preferential packages for customers, Nieh said, adding that the details were yet to be determined.
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