EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) on Tuesday finalized orders for 26 wide-body jets with Boeing Co, the nation’s largest-ever commercial airplane purchase.
The US$6 billion deal includes 18 787-10 Dreamliners with purchase rights for six more, and two 777-300ERs, Boeing said. EVA Airways is the first local carrier to purchase the 787-10 Dreamliner.
The 787-10 Dreamliner offers 20 percent greater fuel efficiency and facilities that create better customer experiences, EVA president Austin Cheng (鄭傳義) said during a signing ceremony in Taipei.
EVA chairman Chang Kuo-wei (張國煒) said the company considers the Boeing 787 Dreamliner a more competitive model compared with the Airbus A350.
“The new model will greatly improve comfort in the cabin, thanks to better control in air pressure, humidity and oxygen content,” Chang said, adding that these features would also benefit the airline’s flight attendants.
Boeing said it hopes the 787-10 Dreamliners would allow EVA Air to expand into new markets, particularly in Southeast Asia, Oceania and North America.
“Boeing is proud to continue playing an integral role in revolutionizing Taiwan’s aviation history as EVA becomes one of the first customers around the world to operate the 787-10,” Boeing president and chief executive Ray Conner said at the ceremony.
EVA now operates 22 Boeing 300ERs, which make up the bulk of its fleet, which is expected to grow to more than 100 planes by 2020, the airline said.
Delivery of the first of the 787-10 Dreamliners ordered is scheduled for 2018, it said.
In related news, Chang said the increasing occurrence of terrorist attacks should only have limited impact on the global aviation market.
Passengers might feel a bit concerned about traveling in the short term, but such uneasiness should not last long, the way the outbreak of the Middle East respiratory syndrome in South Korea triggered a decline in aviation ridership that recovered after three months, he 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
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
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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