The nation’s airlines continued to cancel more flights from Taiwan to Chinese destinations this month due to an outbreak of the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV).
EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) and its affiliate Uni Airways Corp (立榮航空) yesterday announced that they would be canceling an additional 300 flights from Taiwan to China from Feb. 17 to Feb. 29.
Last week, the airlines announced that they were canceling 232 flights for the first half of this month, according to the information on their Web sites.
Almost every Chinese destination would be affected, no matter whether they are first-tier, second-tier or third-tier cities, EVA Airways said.
Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Dalian, Xian, Hangzhou, Zhengzhou, Guilin, Chongqing and Hohhot are among the affected destinations, it added.
It would still be operating flights to China that have sold more seats, EVA said, adding that it is willing to help passengers change their tickets.
“We might delay the resumption of our normal flight schedule until after Feb. 16, depending on when the spread of 2019-nCoV is stopped or controlled,” an EVA communications officer said by telephone.
State-owned China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) said that it would halt 40 flights to China until Monday next week, with the affected destinations including Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and Xuzhou.
As for flights to Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, CAL said it would halt flights on that route until the end of this month.
From Tuesday next week through Feb. 22, CAL and its subsidiary Mandarin Airlines (華信航空) would cancel about 120 round-trip flights from Taiwan to more than 10 Chinese cities, the airline said.
Tigerair Taiwan Ltd (台灣虎航), another subsidiary of CAL, said that it is canceling 52 round-trip flights to Macau from today through Feb. 26.
Starlux Airlines Co (星宇航空), which operates six round-trip flights from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to Macau per day, yesterday said that as of Sunday it had canceled all three flights to Macau until after March 29, as tourists are less interested in visiting the territory since the outbreak.
“We would resume two flights per day after March 29 and plan to resume all three flights from June 1 as we expect the virus crisis would have eased by then,” a Starlux official told the Taipei Times by telephone.
Macau is one of the airline’s three destinations following its launch of operations on Jan. 23.
Starlux flies to Da Nang, Vietnam, and Penang, Malaysia, and those services would be unaffected, said the official who asked not to be named.
Additional reporting by CNA
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