Flights between Taipei International Airport (Songshan) and South Korea’s Kimpo International Airport will be operated solely by China Airlines (CAL) and EVA Airways, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) announced yesterday, but added that there was no start date yet.
The two nations still need to negotiate the start date for the route.
The route was made possible through an amendment of the aviation agreement between Taiwan and South Korea last year. It is part of the government’s “Golden Aviation Circle in Northeast Asia” scheme, which aims to provide direct services from Taipei to other major cities in the Asia-Pacific region.
Aside from Kimpo, Songshan also has direct flight services to Shanghai’s Hongqiao Airport and Japan’s Haneda Airport.
Based on the bilateral aviation agreement between Taiwan and South Korea, each country can dispatch seven flights per week.
Civil Aeronautics Administration Director General Ying Cheng-pong (尹承蓬) said EVA would operate four flights and CAL three.
However, TransAsia Airway is upset at the allotment and has accused the aeronautics administration of being unfair.
“We do not blame the government for not assigning the route to us,” TransAsia chairman Vincent Lin (林明昇) told a press conference.
“We feel sorry that the government did not offer all domestic air carriers a fair platform to compete with each other for air rights,” he said.
TransAsia said it was qualified to operate the route based on the guidelines governing the distribution of the international aviation rights. It questioned why the aeronautics administration was in such a hurry to distribute the flights when its application has not even been approved.
However, Ying said Minister of Transportation and Communications Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) had reviewed the application submitted by TransAsia and given the aeronautics administration full authorization to handle it.
The CAA has strictly followed the guidelines to distribute the flights, which maintains that each aviation route will be operated by only two carriers, Ying said.
A third carrier can only operate a route if the average occupancy rate of flights on the route has reached 75 percent and both carriers on the route have yet to use up all of the flights distributed to them, Ying said.
Additional reporting by staff reporter Amy Su
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