A new international terminal at Taichung International Airport is scheduled to be completed next year, which will double the airport’s capacity, a government official said yesterday.
The Taichung Airport Office said the current terminal was designed to accommodate 1.2 million passengers per year. With the increase in international flights at the airport, total passenger numbers at the airport topped 1.45 million last year, exceeding the current capacity.
The new terminal is to be built by the National Expressway Engineering Bureau (NEEB) and it will consist of one underground floor and four floors above ground level. The new facility will be designed to accommodate 1.35 million passengers.
NEEB chief engineer Lu Jieh-bin (呂介斌) said the exterior of the new terminal would be built in the image of a soaring eagle. Once completed, the terminal will also be equipped with five jet bridges.
Meanwhile, the number of public parking spaces at the airport will also be increased from 120 to 320.
Aside from building the new terminal, Lu said the bureau has renovated the taxiway and built new hangars for aircraft maintenance.
“Currently, the airport can only accommodate aircraft with up to 120 seats,” Lu said. “Once the construction of the taxiway is complete, the airport will be able to handle aircraft like the Boeing 757 or 767, which can seat 200 passengers.”
Lu said the Civil Aeronautics Administration is scheduled to inspect the new terminal in January next year, when passengers on international and domestic flights will be using separate facilities.
In related news, industry leaders said yesterday that a new direct service between Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) and Gimpo Airport in South Korea is expected to significantly boost the number of Taiwanese visitors to that country.
With the opening of the new air route on April 30, the number of Taiwanese travelers to South Korea is expected to increase by 50,000 per year, the Korea Tourism Organization said.
“The timing is good because spring is the high season for tourism,” organization director You Jin-ho said.
The new service between the downtown airports in Taipei and Seoul could save travelers about two hours travel time, which is a huge incentive, You said.
Tourism in South Korea last year was weak, mainly because of the effects of the massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan, one of South Korea’s biggest sources of visitors, he said. However, it is picking up again, he added.
“I am seeing more Taiwanese people, like Japanese, making quick weekend visits just to go shopping,” he said.
Taiwanese travel agencies also expressed optimism about Taiwan-South Korea tourism, anticipating a 20 percent to 30 percent increase in sales after the launch of the non-stop service.
According to Tourism Bureau figures, the number of visits by Taiwanese to South Korea last year totaled 420,000.
Additional reporting by CNA
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