Nearly a quarter of the international flights at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport were either canceled or postponed yesterday due to the imminent arrival of Typhoon Nepartak.
As of 8:30pm yesterday, the center of Nepartak was 180km southeast of Taitung. It was moving northwest toward Taitung at 14kph, according to the Central Weather Bureau.
The bureau forecast that the center of the typhoon would make landfall at Taitung between 6am and 7am today, adding that the storm’s center is to enter the Taiwan Strait at 5pm today.
Schools and workplaces will be closed today across the nation, except for Kinmen and Matsu (Lienchiang County).
Nepartak also brought strong winds to Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼), with the wind speed reaching level 15 on the Beaufort scale. Taiwan uses an extended Beaufort scale that has a maximum reading of 17.
Figures from Taoyuan International Airport Corp (TIAC) showed that 35 outbound passenger flights and 75 inbound flights had been canceled as of 6pm yesterday, while 12 passenger flights were delayed.
Photo: Chen Kuan-pei, Taipei Times
Eighteen cargo flights were also canceled and six cargo flights were delayed.
A total of 157 domestic flights were suspended because of the storm, the Civil Aeronautics Administration said.
The Taoyuan airport denied reports that it would suspend all international flights today, saying that airlines own different types of aircraft and follow different procedures for flights under various weather conditions.
Photo: Ritchie Tongo, EPA
The airport will not be closed unless the air traffic control tower is not operating, TIAC said, advising passengers to contact the airlines for the latest flight information.
Several domestic and international carriers have announced that some of their flights will be canceled today.
EVA Airways (長榮航空) said that flights leaving from Taoyuan airport to Osaka, Okinawa and Sapporo in Japan; Incheon, South Korea; and Hong Kong, Macau and Zhengzhou, China, have been canceled.
Photo: copied by Chen Wen-chan, Taipei Times
Other flights scheduled to depart from Taoyuan airport this morning will all leave after 11am, EVA Air said.
Flights from Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport), Taichung Airport and Kaohsiung Airport will operate as scheduled, the company said.
Uni Air (立榮航空), a subsidiary of EVA Air, said that flights from Taoyuan to China’s Fuzhou and Qingdao have been canceled.
China Airlines (中華航空), the nation’s largest carrier, canceled flights that were scheduled to leave from Taoyuan, Songshan, Tainan or Kaohsiung. A majority of them were to take off from Taoyuan, including flights to Xiamen, Beijing and Hong Kong in China; Tokyo, Fukuoka, Kagoshima, Okinawa, Takamatsu, Toyama and Osaka in Japan; Seoul and Busan in South Korea; and Singapore.
Budget carriers and Chinese airline companies have also canceled some of their flights, such as Tigerair Taiwan (台灣虎航), Vanilla Air, Scoot and Air China (中國國際航空).
Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp has suspended all services today.
The Taiwan Railways Administration canceled 130 express train service leaving before 5pm today.
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