Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport’s Terminal 2 yesterday continued to rely on manual power to load passengers’ bags as the breakdown of the baggage-handling system on Thursday remained unfixed.
At press time, airport authorities expressed the hope that the computer system would be back up and running before midnight.
The breakdown of the terminal’s baggage-handling system started on Thursday, causing delays of about 30 minutes for five departing flights. Airport authorities said the breakdown was caused by a computer malfunction.
“We dispatched 150 staff to help make sure the baggage was loaded aboard all the flights, “ said airport spokesman Chao Shao-lien (趙紹廉), who added that this measure prevented even greater delays.
The airport’s current baggage-handling system has been operational since 2000 and this was the first time it had failed as a result of computer problems.
The airport, the nation’s main gateway, has come under fire since late June when a jetway collapsed at Terminal 2.
In early July, the airport again drew attention for the wrong reason when staffers in the central control room were caught holding a party and drinking alcoholic beverages while on duty.
Repeated bathroom leaks that have left both of the airport’s terminals flooded and complaints of defective equipment and unclear signs in terminal lobbies have only compounded the facility’s woes.
Meanwhile, in a poll conducted in August, foreign travelers gave the airport low ratings for facilities, food prices and staff conduct. As part of efforts to improve the airport’s reputation for poor food, the airport launched a two-week food festival on Oct. 8. A new evaluation system will determines whether food providers can extend their contracts.
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