Taipei Times (TT): What is your outlook for the airline industry?
Keizaburo Yokota: Generally, I think industry sentiment will be unstable in the future, just as it was before, because the business of international air carriers is affected by all kinds of world events.
Despite the recent drop in petroleum prices [the main cost for air carriers], the uneasy situation in the Middle East creates a risk that prices will rise again.
Photo: CNA
In the long-term, I expect oil prices to go up. The company has to expect that petroleum prices will go up at some point, and therefore it needs to keep its body [core business] healthy and efficient enough to make a profit even in bad times so it can stay operational.
TT: What are TransAsia Airways Corp’s (復興航空, TNA) advantages in view of the economic uncertainties?
Yokota: Compared with other carriers, we have a specific fundamental policy, which could make us a financially efficient airline. TransAsia chairman Vincent Lin (林明昇) gave us the goal of being a regional airline in Asia by running short-haul or medium-haul routes of no longer than four to five hours.
Because of this strategy, the company’s business is relatively stable compared with the business situations of airlines operating long-haul services, because long-haul flights consume more [fuel] and suffer heavier losses when petroleum prices go up.
TT: TransAsia is going to initiate its first regular route to Japan — between Taipei and Osaka — on June 28, in a first step toward entering the Northeast Asian market. What is your near-term plan?
Yokota: Our priority is to develop and spread the network further.
Thanks to the open skies policy, we plan to launch seven more regular routes by the end of this year, after inaugurating the route between Taipei and Osaka. Next year, we hope to initiate regular services to Tokyo.
It is the best timing for Trans-Asia to initiate regular services to Japan, because the carrier has obtained a great deal of experience in the market by operating chartered flights.
TransAsia launched chartered flight services to Japan in 2008, and operated more than 1,000 chartered flights to more than 30 cities in Japan — mainly in second-tier cities and airports — in 2010.
TT: How do you plan to operate Japanese routes? Do you have any plans to expand TransAsia’s popularity to Japan?
Yokota: Attracting Japanese customers will be very important. Currently, more than 60 percent of our passengers taking flights between Taiwan and Japan are Taiwanese.
Since the air carrier offers mutual services, we will do our best to attract more Japanese customers for TransAsia, with the goal of making them account for 50 percent of the passengers between Taiwan and Japan.
However, it will not be easy to increase TransAsia’s popularity in the short term, because four airlines — China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空), EVA Airways Corp (EVA, 長榮航空), Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways — have dominated the market for a long time.
Therefore, we have to let the market know more about TransAsia by building up the brand, encouraging passengers see TransAsia as a reliable airline and attracting their repeat business.
Flexibility, on the other hand, may be a major weapon for TransAsia, as we will continue to run chartered flights to other destinations that don’t have regular routes in a bid to offer mixed service to customers.
However, overall, if we hope to enter the Japanese market, we have to adopt a Japanese service mentality.
TT: What is the Japanese service mentality?
Yokota: Just like customers in other countries, Japanese customers look carefully at safety and good services. However, in Japan, I would say that it is important not to make drastic changes, because they usually find it hard to accept such things.
We have to firmly synchronize flight safety and service quality to deal with Japanese customers, because they are very sensitive to services, hoping to experience something higher than their expectations.
It will take time to build TransAsia’s popularity and reputation in Japan. My mission is to do it as early as possible to catch up with and exceed our peers amid severe competition.
TT: How about TransAsia’s plan in South Korea, the other important market in Northeast Asia?
Yokota: Launching a regular route between Taiwan and South Korea may not be so easy because of restrictions on aviation rights. However, it might be feasible to create a “triangle” concept to spread TransAsia’s coverage to South Korea.
Currently, people in Taiwan usually visit Japan and go back to Taiwan. Why don’t we encourage them to visit South Korea from Japan and then come back to Taiwan from South Korea? Similarly, we could send more people from Japan to visit South Korea and Taiwan by offering them a triangular flight.
In this case, we have to cooperate with other airlines that operate flights between Japan and South Korea through a code-sharing strategy, but this could be developed as a unique service offered by TransAsia.
TT: Have you started to talk with other airlines about cooperation?
Yokota: We are still considering it. This will be a step-by-step process for us, and we have to run Japanese routes smoothly as the first step in developing the market in Northeast Asia.
TT: Facing the rise of low-cost carriers (LCC), how do you view their influence on the industry?
Yokota: The prosperity of LCCs is good for the airline sector and these carriers helped expand total demand for airlines. While some customers of full-service airlines could switch to budget airlines, LCC customers might change their minds and choose full-service carriers at some point as well.
In my opinion, although budget airlines in Asia have been growing and are still increasing, their numbers will reach a peak at some point.
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