Aviation experts yesterday lauded China Airlines Ltd's (CAL,
"It's a good choice," said Mike Lo (樂大信), former chairman of Far Eastern Air Transport Corp (遠東航空), adding that it would be the largest deal in local aviation history.
Lo said that, in general, Airbus' pricing has always been more competitive than that of the US's Boeing Co.
If it were to be offered a good deal for the 20 new aircraft after trading in its six to-be-retired A340-300 aircraft, CAL's prospects of establishing a modern next-generation fleet of medium-capacity long-haul aircraft should be promising, he said.
"The choice of British Rolls-Royce engines [instead of the US' General Electric], the best available, is key to its business success," Lo said, dismissing media speculation that the deal had anything to do with politics.
Media reports suggested that CAL chose a European manufacturer rather than a US competitor to put pressure on the US.
CAL's board approved on Tuesday a letter of intent with Airbus for the purchase of 20 A350-900s, to be introduced from 2015 to 2020, at a total list price of US$4.2 billion.
"The move reaffirms CAL's determination to improve and modernize its fleet, expand its markets, and meet passenger demand in order to strengthen its market position," CAL said in a statement.
The airline also aims to enhance Taiwan's role as a regional aviation hub in the Asia Pacific, the statement added.
"CAL is committed to providing its passengers with the best possible service and flight safety," said CAL chairman Ringo Chao (
Lo also said Chao is a talented CEO, who "respects professionalism and systems."
The CAL-Airbus deal includes 14 firm orders with a further six on option for aircraft with a capacity of approximately 366 seats, more than CAL's existing A340 and A330 aircraft, as well as a higher commonality so as to save training costs.
CAL's fleet totals 68 aircraft, including 48 passenger aircraft and 20 freighters, with an average age of 5.6 years, the company said.
Its passenger fleet consists of 15 Boeing 747-400s, 11 Boeing 737-800s, six Airbus A340-300s and 16 Airbus 330-300s.
For cargo operations, the airline deploys the largest fleet of Boeing 747-400F freighters in the world.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to