The nation’s two leading air carriers said yesterday they expected revenues to fall in the short term owing to flight cancelations to Japan over radiation concerns.
EVA Airways Corp (EVA, 長榮航空), the nation’s second-biggest airline, announced the cancelation of 55 flights to Japan, including all 38 flights to Sendai City, the capital of Miyagi Prefecture, until June 30. It also canceled 12 flights to Tokyo and five to Sapporo on the Japanese island of Hokkaido for the rest of this month.
Miyagi Prefecture is one of the regions hardest hit by the massive earthquake on Friday.
The cancelation of these flights reflected EVA’s concerns about the radiation crisis and the drop in tourists to Japan after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck, an EVA public relations officer said by telephone yesterday.
“The company’s revenue will be influenced negatively in the short term by this cancelation, but the influence could be limited after a while by further demand from passengers with business affairs,” she said.
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空), the nation’s largest airline, said the company has not made a final decision about canceling flights to Japan. CAL is still collecting information to decide whether to cancel the flights, spokesman Hamilton Liu (劉國芊) said by telephone yesterday.
“Although the number of tourists could drop following the government’s ‘red alert’ warning over Japan trips, there might be more demand from people coming back to Taiwan from Japan,” Liu said.
CAL does not have flights to Sendai, while it has 36 flights to Tokyo per week, according to the company.
The company’s revenue would definitely be influenced by the quake, but it is difficult to say for how long and how deep the impact would be, as the situation is still unfolding, Liu said.
However, Liu was less worried about the quake’s impact on CAL’s cargo business compared with passenger transport, as cargo revenue to Japan accounts for less than 10 percent of the company’s total, he said.
Shares of CAL fell 6.78 percent to NT$16.5 yesterday in Taipei trading, while EVA dropped 6.9 percent to NT$22.95, compared with the benchmark TAIEX’s drop of 3.35 percent, stock exchange data showed.
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