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Hurt by high speed rail, domestic air carriers drop routes

Three carriers suspended four routes in the domestic air travel market yesterday, mainly as a result of poor business because of fierce competition from the high speed rail, which launched operations at the beginning of last year.

UNI Air terminated its Taipei-Kaohsiung route, while Far Eastern Air Transport Corp (FAT) stopped operations on the Taipei-Tainan and the Kaohsiung-Hualien routes. Mandarin Airlines also stopped its flights from Taichung to Taitung.

With the companies' withdrawal from the domestic market, three carriers -- Mandarin, FAT and TransAsia Airways -- now ply the Taipei-Kaohsiung route, providing a total of 15 flights daily.

TransAsia is now the sole carrier operating the Taipei-Tainan route, with eight flights per day, while Mandarin now offers two flights per week on the Kaohsiung-Hualien route.

Mandarin's suspending its service means that the Taichung-Taitung route is no longer offered by any airline.

Data by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications' Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) showed that the passenger load factor on the Taipei-Tainan route had dropped by 64 percent last year from the previous year.

During the same period, the passenger load factor on the Taipei-Kaohsiung and Kaohsiung-Hualien routes also fell to below 60 percent and 40 percent respectively, CAA tallies showed.

At times, there were fewer than 10 passengers onboard flights between Taichung and Taitung.

Last month, the CAA approved the carriers' requests to halt services on these routes because of the impact of the north-south high speed rail, which cut travel time between Taipei and Kaohsiung from four hours to 90 minutes.
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