Far Eastern Air Transport (FAT) could start providing charter flight services for the Lunar New Year holiday this week after the Ministry of Transportation and Communications agreed on Saturday that the airline could help transport travelers to Kinmen, if there is excessive passenger demand.
The airline’s operations were suspended in 2008 because of the poor state of its finances. In 2009, the company secured approval from the Taipei District Court to restructure its finances.
Earlier this month, two of FAT’s aircraft passed safety certification by the Civil Aeronautics Administration and the ministry approved FAT’s plan to resume operations, provided it meet a number of requirements.
Civil Aeronautics Administration Director-General Yin Chen-pong (尹承蓬) said FAT was in a position to provide flights, adding that the Kinmen County Government had said it might need FAT to provide charter flights to transport residents of Kinmen from Taiwan proper during peak air traffic hours.
“If it can complete all the administrative procedures by [today], maybe it will have a chance to apply to offer charter flights [from tomorrow],” Yin said,
The administration estimates that charter flights by FAT would be available on Lunar New Year’s Eve — Wednesday — when the majority of people will be eager to go home for family reunions.
The administration required the company to have at least NT$1.34 billion (US$46.13 million) in cash or bank guarantees before it could fully resume operations.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods