China Airlines (中華航空) and EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) will cut as much as 10 percent of flights as they struggle to cope with jet-fuel prices that have doubled in a year.
China Airlines is axing 100 passenger flights a month, mainly to the US and Asia, spokesman Bruce Chen (陳鵬宇) said by telephone yesterday. EVA Air will cancel about 5 percent of its passenger services from Sept. 1 to Dec. 1, spokeswoman Katherine Ko (柯文玲) said.
The airlines follow Qantas Airways Ltd, China Southern Airlines Co (中國南方航空) and other Asia-Pacific carriers in announcing cuts after surcharges failed to offset surging jet-fuel costs. Higher ticket prices have also helped damp travel demand, with Taiwanese making 0.8 percent fewer flights overseas in the first quarter than a year earlier.
The carriers “lose money from every flight they make,” said Bruce Tsao, an analyst at Capital Securities Corp (群益證券) in Taipei. “They don’t have any choice” except making cuts.
He rates both China Airlines and EVA Air as “hold.”
China Airlines fell 5.4 percent to NT$14.85 at 12:43pm in Taipei trading, compared with a 1.8 percent decline in TAIEX. EVA Airways declined 4.4 percent to NT$16.35.
China Airlines will axe 50 all-cargo flights a month as well as making cuts in areas including marketing, Chen said. The carrier presently has no plans to reduce salaries or to trim flights to Europe, where earnings are better, he said.
“We’re hoping to control our losses,” Chen said.
The reduced number of flights “will continue until the company turns a profit or oil costs become relatively favorable,” he said.
China Airlines’ loss widened to NT$2.97 billion (US$98 million) in the first quarter, from NT$806 million a year earlier.
EVA Air’s loss was NT$2.29 billion, compared with NT$331 million a year earlier.
EVA Air will cut services to Amsterdam, Los Angeles and Ho Chi Minh City, Ko said. The airline has yet to decide whether the flights will resume after Dec. 1, she said.
Taiwanese carriers have raised surcharges on international routes three times this year. Far Eastern Air Transport Corp (遠東航空) halted flights last month due to a lack of funds.
At least seven major Asia-Pacific airlines have announced plans to cut flights in the past two weeks, because of surging fuel costs. Qantas and Air New Zealand Ltd said last week they will trim international services. China Southern, China’s biggest airline, is planning similar moves.
Airlines across the region dropped after the price of oil jumped the most ever in dollar terms on Friday, climbing 8.4 percent to US$138.54 a barrel.
Carriers worldwide may report a combined loss of as much as US$6.1 billion this year, the worst since 2003, the International Air Transport Association said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the