In the face of volatile international oil prices, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) met yesterday to discuss a 10 percent fare hike for domestic flights, but no details were released as of press time.
CAA officials estimated that the fare markup, once approved, will impact passengers after the Lunar New Year, at the earliest.
Airlines proposed a 20 percent fare hike after reporting that costs had risen by NT$100 million from September. The CAA, however, demanded a further review because oil prices have edged lower recently. The CAA asked the airline operators to calculate the cost in terms of the average oil price this year. The price rise will not exceed 10 percent, CAA officials said.
"Nothing is for sure now. Even if the fare hike is approved within the CAA, the proposal still needs to be ratified by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. Then the airlines will report their prices to the ministry," the CAA's director Billy Chang (
The CAA yesterday also announced a lowering of war-risk insurance fees for domestic and international flights from next year. Since shortly after the 911 terrorist attack on the US in 2001, passengers have been levied NT$70 on domestic flights and US$3 on international flights.
From Jan. 1, however, the fees will be dropped to NT$63 for domestic flights and US$2.7 for international routes. The CAA said that the war-risk insurance is a temporary measure and the price will be further adjusted as the international situation changes.
The Consumers' Foundation yesterday strongly condemned the government and air carriers' collusion to hike fares on domestic routes. It is slated to bring the case to the Control Yuan today.
"As they insist on sacrificing consumers' interests, we will ask the Control Yuan to correct the decision," the foundation's chairman, Jason Lee (
Sun Li-chun (
In addition, prices for crude oil are declining and personnel streamlining has increased their efficiency.
"Actually they should reduce fares as operation costs are decreasing," Sun said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching