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.
NSO Opera in Concert — Verdi’s Otello at the National Concert Hall, originally scheduled for 7:30pm today, has been postponed to 2:30pm tomorrow; refunds, if needed, will be provided at the box office from 12pm tomorrow to July 22 at 8pm with no service charge.
Tomorrow’s NSO Salon Concert for the 2016-2017 season has been rescheduled to 8pm, Sunday.
Zhou Xian’s (鄒翔) solo piano recital at the Recital Hall has been rescheduled to 7:30pm on Wednesday, and the venue will be changed to National Taiwan University of Arts’ Fuzhou Performance Hall. Due to the change of venue, tickets must be refunded first and then repurchased for the Fuzhou Performance Hall (NT$500), organizers said, adding that refunds will be available until July 20.
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
RSS