The Civil Aeronautics Administra-tion (CAA) will not request that Far Eastern Air Transport Corp (FAT, 遠東航空) immediately disclose its financial statement for the last fiscal year, CAA director general Billy Chang (張國政) said yesterday.
"By law, airline companies are required to give the CAA a copy of their certified financial statement on the previous fiscal year in May," Chang said. "The administration will not ask it [FAT] to turn it in early."
A story published in yesterday's Chinese-language China Times said that some bank creditors had threatened to stop providing loans to FAT should it fail to deliver its financial statement by tomorrow.
The financial problems do not affect the company's operation, Chang said.
Meanwhile, more than 100 FAT employees gathered at the firm's headquarters near Taipei Songshan Airport yesterday to voice their support for the company.
FAT Workers Union chairman Chen Kuo-liang (
Chen asked that the China Aviation Development Foundation (CADF) help FAT resolve the financial crisis, following the precedent set by Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC).
In 2005, the foundation provided then financially-troubled THSRC NT$4.5 billion (US$136 million) by releasing China Airlines shares.
Chen said the union was holding the press conference because it wanted to refute the wrong message being sent by the media. He said Far Eastern was a reliable brand with 50 years' experience and that anyone interested in managing the company was welcome.
In response, Minister of Transportation and Communication Tsai Duei (
Earlier this month, FAT was granted an extension by the CAA to pay by tomorrow the airplane departure and landing fees for November and December of last year, a sum that has grown to NT$44.86 million.
Given that the company has yet to turn in the departure and landing fees for last month and this month and will soon be asked to pay the March fee as well, the total amount it owes is expected to top NT$1 billion.
Last week, the airline company filed for corporate restructuring in court, which would make it temporarily exempt from paying its debts.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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