China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) said yesterday that both passenger and cargo load factors showed noticeable improvement this month from last month, although they remain low compared with last year.
CAL spokesman Bruce Chen (陳鵬宇) said passenger load factor rose to 75 percent this month, from 70 percent last month.
This month’s figure represents a decline of 20 percent from the level during the same period last year, compared with a 30 percent contraction last month, Chen said.
Meanwhile, the decline in cargo load factor slowed from 25 percent last month to just over 10 percent, compared with a year earlier, Chen said.
“The figures showed the decline shrinking,” Chen said by telephone. “Barring any surprises, the company may be able to break even this year.”
The carrier recorded a net loss of NT$32.35 billion (US$986 million) last year.
For the first six months of this year, the company recorded NT$28.98 billion in revenue on passenger flights, down 14.55% from a year ago,while its cargo revenue reached NT$13.17 billion, down 50.47% from past year.
Chen said the company could stay in the black this year if the global slump continues to slacken and fuel costs hover between US$60 and US$70 a barrel.
CAL’s revenue in the first quarter fell 26 percent year-on-year to NT$23.1 billion, and was down 18 percent from the previous quarter.
In addition, the company expected a pickup in the number of Chinese tourists to help boost its revenue in the second half.
Last month, an average of 700 Chinese tourists a day visited Taiwan, but the figure was 1,200 a day last week and is forecast to reach 2,000 a day next month, data from a local travel association showed.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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