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Exchange Club staff protest against airline

FAT cannot do anything that is outside of its core business at the moment, as we are under a protective umbrella.

Yute Lee, FAT spokesman

About 20 employees at Exchange Club (虹頂商務聯誼社), an investment of cash-strapped Far Eastern Air Transport (FAT, 遠東航空), protested in front of FAT’s headquarters in Taipei yesterday to demand their salaries for the past three months.

FAT holds almost two-thirds of Exchange Club’s shares. However, the airline claims it does not have a direct shareholding relationship with Exchange Club, as it invested via another business entity.

As FAT is undergoing a reorganization after a financial crisis in February and cannot afford to pay Exchange Club employees’ salaries, FAT said yesterday that the employees had agreed to file an application to the court to liquidate the business club.

“FAT cannot do anything that is outside its core business at the moment, as we are under a protective umbrella,” FAT spokesman Yute Lee (李有德) said by telephone yesterday. “Furthermore, FAT was only able to pay its employees 60 percent of this month’s salary, so we cannot pay Exchange Club’s employees.”

FAT owed its 1,200 employees a total of one-and-a-half months of salary.

Former FAT president Philip Chen (陳尚群), who resigned on March 5 after the airline failed to pay its employees salaries in February and their bonuses for last year, was the person that should take responsibility for Exchange Club, Lee said.

Meanwhile, FAT said four of its 16 planes had been barred from flying. The airline said that of its 16 planes, only four are self-owned, while the rest are rented from leasing companies.

The nation’s leading plane leasing company, Chailease Finance Co (中租迪和), claimed FAT’s 757 cargo aircraft and 757 passenger airplane’s engines as its property at the end of February and those planes can no longer be used. Two more of FAT’s MD passenger airplanes’ engines were claimed as collateral by the airline’s creditors on Wednesday.

Despite this, all FAT’s domestic and international air routes will continue flying, except for the Taipei to Tainan route, Lee said.

Asked about the airline’s recapitalization plan, Lee said none of FAT’s shareholders had plans to inject capital into the company prior to the deadline of noon yesterday.

Lee’s remarks were in response to media speculation that Chia Wen-chung (賈文中), an FAT shareholder, would buy a larger shareholding in order to help the airline.
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