The Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) yesterday said that it has asked two domestic carriers to offer additional flights to Kinmen and Penghu after Far Eastern Air Transport (FAT, 遠東航空) announced that it is to cease operations today.
There are 500 passengers stranded overseas, the CAA added.
FAT yesterday morning said that its Web site was temporarily shut down for maintenance, which was what happened on Nov. 23, 2016, the day TransAsia Airways terminated its operations.
Photo: CNA
“Due to financial losses and difficulties in securing funds for operations, we would stop all aviation services starting Dec. 13,” FAT wrote in a statement yesterday.
“Severance pay for our employees would be calculated until Dec. 13, except those who are to stay at the company to handle the aftermath,” it said. “The human resources department would send employment certificates and documents to cancel employees’ National Health Insurance and labor insurance so they can apply for unemployment compensation.”
At a news conference at CAA headquarters in Taipei yesterday, FAT vice presidents Huang Yu-chi (黃育祺) and Lu Chi-rong (盧紀融) bowed and apologized to the public for any inconvenience.
FAT has a funding gap of about NT$30 million (US$986,647), Huang said.
“Since 2011, people have seen how hard FAT chairman Chang Kang-wei (張綱維) has worked to fund the airline’s operations,” Huang said. “Despite the losses, Chang still hoped to move the company forward and it is a pity that it has to shut down because of funding problems.”
Huang said that even top officials, including himself, had not known until yesterday morning that the company had failed to make mortgage payments.
There had been attempts to contact Chang all morning, but to no avail, he said.
“This is too sudden,” Huang said. “The company has 1,008 employees. We would try to protect employees.”
Asked when he had last seen Chang, Huang said that the chairman’s secretary reported he was in his office on Wednesday morning.
However, Huang himself had not seen him for three weeks, he added.
Although the airline had only temporarily suspended operations and would try to resume operations today, the CAA said that it would not allow FAT to offer flights given its financial problems.
During the news conference, Chang sent a message via the Line messaging app, saying that he was sorry for what happened.
Despite investing more than NT$900 million in the airline, its financial losses deepened due to a decline in cross-strait flights and his misguided trust in false promises by four Chinese con men, Chang said.
They lied about wanting to invest in the firm and charged him high processing fees, he said, adding that the police should investigate.
CAA Deputy Director Fang Chih-wen (方志文) said that the agency has been closely monitoring FAT’s operations since July 2017, particularly its cash flow.
It reminded the airline that it needed sufficient funds to make short-term mortgage payments, Fang said.
The CAA formed an emergency response team at 8am yesterday and asked the company’s management to explain the situation, he said.
FAT has NT$267 million in a consumer protection trust fund, including NT$150 million in cash and NT$117 million in checks, which would be used to refund passengers who have unused tickets, he said.
The unexpected announcement has left 500 people stranded overseas, with 169 passengers in China and 331 elsewhere, Fang said.
The CAA has coordinated with Uni Air (立榮航空) and Mandarin Airlines (華信航空) to offer 16 additional flights to Kinmen and Penghu counties today, he said, adding that they would have adequate capacity to transport people ahead of the Jan. 11 elections and the Lunar New Year holiday at the end of next month.
Founded in 1957, FAT was the nation’s first civil carrier and offered mainly domestic flights. It encountered financial concerns and temporarily suspended operations in 2008, when it was unable to pay aviation fuel charges and aircraft landing fees.
In April 2009, the Taipei District Court approved a company plan to restructure its finances.
Chang took ownership of the airline in October that year and it resumed flights on April 18, 2011.
In May, Chang told a news conference that the airline canceled 31 international flights because the CAA imposed flight hour restrictions on it.
The company was operating normally and had no funding problems, he said at the time.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has