Carrying on a tradition of strategic alliances with major hotel chains, China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) announced a partnership with Formosa International Hotels Corp (晶華國際酒店集團) yesterday to provide new in-flight food services.
As of July 1, CAL began offering Shanghainese cuisine from the Regent Hotel, a subsidiary of Formosa International Hotels Corp, to first class passengers on its route from Taipei to Tokyo. Dynasty class passengers can also enjoy the new cuisine on routes from Taipei to Osaka, Fukuoka, Hiroshima and Sapporo.
CAL also provides six unique dishes to Dynasty class passengers on weekend charter flights from China to Taipei, which are inspired by art works at the National Palace Museum.
“Part of Taiwan’s culture is its commitment to fine food. We want to present the best cuisine Taiwan has to offer even before passengers land in the country,” CAL president Sun Huang-hsiang (孫洪祥) said during the ceremony yesterday.
“By pushing the envelope on excellent food services, we hope that China Airlines will stand out from its peers and attract additional business from world travelers. The Regent Hotel is proud to be a part of this endeavor,” said Angela Chang (張安琪), president of Formosa International Hotels Corp.
Meanwhile, despite positive re-focusing efforts from CAL, the beleaguered Far Eastern Air Transport Corp (FAT, 遠東航空) is facing bankruptcy in the near future.
FAT yesterday elected Huang Jian-hue (黃劍輝) and Hsu Hui-fung (�?p) as the company’s new chairman and vice chairman respectively, at a time when the carrier owes months of salary to its 1,200 employees.
FAT is also behind on payments for multiple leases on its office buildings, land and aircraft hangars that have been leased from the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA), which prompted the CAA to cut off water and electricity supplies to the company earlier yesterday.
However, since tropical storm Kalmaegi was approaching, the CAA said it would temporarily restore water and electricity to the carrier, which would allow FAT to complete its storm preparation activities.
As soon as the storm passes, the restrictions would be reinstated, the CAA said.
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
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained