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Taipei, Kaohsiung flights survive for now

Flights between Taipei and Kaohsiung will be maintained for another month, despite a request from Mandarin Airlines (華信航空) to halt the service.

The Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) has asked Mandarin Airlines to provide the service for at least one more month, until the end of next month, because demand for air travel in Kaohsiung and Pingtung counties remains high, said CAA director-general Lee Lung-wen (李龍文) on Thursday, adding that “this is why the CAA has not approved the carrier’s request to halt the service.”

“Taipei-Kaohsiung flights will be maintained through September,” Lee said.

Seat occupancy on the Taipei-Kaohsiung route still averages around 50 percent, he said.

Meanwhile, Mandarin Airlines, the sole operator on the route, announced that from today it would only offer a single daily round-trip flight between the two largest cities in Taiwan, down from the previous 14 round-trip flights per week.

The number of flights on the Taipei-Kaohsiung route exceeded 100 per day during peak years, when it was the most profitable domestic route.

A Mandarin Airlines company executive said a passenger load factor lower than 60 percent makes it very difficult for a carrier to maintain operations.

Air travel on the western Taiwan corridor has been hard-hit by the high-speed train system that went into service in January last year.

In the face of competition from the bullet train, airlines have progressively cut the number of flights between Taipei and Taichung and between Taipei, Chiayi and Tainan.

In 1997, passengers took 18 million flights inside Taiwan, but the figure decreased to 8 million in 2006 and to 4 million last year, statistics show.

Industry sources predict that the number will drop even further this year.

In another development, UNI Airways Corp (立榮航空), which flies from Taipei to Pingtung and Hengchun, is considering canceling flights on the two routes. But Lee said the CAA would not allow the airline to stop flying the routes, out of fear that the local airports might be forced to close as a result.
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