Starlux Airlines Co (星宇航空) is to concentrate on operating routes from Taiwan to second-tier cities in Asia until mid-2021 to avoid head-to-head competition with the nation’s two major airlines in big cities, chairman Chang Kuo-wei (張國煒) said yesterday.
Starlux is to initially use five Airbus SE A321neo aircraft when it begins services next year, he said.
As the narrow-body aircraft have less capacity and is less efficient compared with the wide-body jets used by other airlines, it would be less competitive if it flies to big cities in Asia, he added.
Photo: Kao Shih-ching, Taipei Times
“We have to consider what kinds of airplanes our competitors use when choosing destinations. We do not want to play hardball with them,” Chang told a news conference in Taipei, where he introduced the uniforms for the airline’s pilots, flight attendants and ground staff.
Some passengers prefer twin-aisle aircraft when flying to big cities, which Starlux also took into account, he said.
StarLux has chosen Macau; Penang, Malaysia; and Da Nang, Vietnam; as its first three destinations when services start on Jan. 23, because they are second-tier cities, he added.
The airline would gradually expand its network to other second-tier cities in Asia next year, Chang said, adding that it would not fly to first-tier cities in Asia until after taking delivery of five A350-900 wide-body aircraft in 2021.
That means Starlux would not offer flights to Japan next year, even though it is one of the most-favored destinations for Taiwanese, he said, adding that Southeast Asia remains the biggest market for transfer business.
Starlux is to receive one Airbus A321neo later this month, which Chang said he would fly himself from Hamburg, Germany, to “make sure everything with the new plane is okay.”
The second and third A321neo aircraft would be delivered later this year and in early January before StarLux begins services, he said.
The airline is to take delivery of another two A321neos later next year and expects to receive a total of 12 airplanes — including A350s and A321neos — in 2021, which would be the highest number of deliveries in a single year in Taiwan, he added.
Starlux is confident that it would be able to beat rivals that also use single-aisle jets, as it has equipped its narrow-body aircraft with amenities typically offered only in wide-body jetliners, such as lie-flat business-class seats, Chang said.
It would provide free Wi-Fi service for all business and economy-class passengers, he added.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
The US Department of Commerce last week ordered multiple chip equipment companies to halt shipments of certain tools to China’s second-largest chipmaker, Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd (華虹半導體), its latest action to slow the country’s development of advanced chips, two people familiar with the matter said. The department sent letters to at least a handful of companies informing them of restrictions on tools and other materials destined for two Hua Hong facilities US officials believe make China’s most sophisticated chips, the people said. Top US chip equipment companies Lam Research Corp, Applied Materials Inc and KLA Corp, each of which has significant
RSS