Starting next month, passengers of international flights will be able to find information on free luggage allowance on their air tickets, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said yesterday.
CAA said in the past airlines were not required to inform passengers about the free luggage allowance. However, consumer disputes arose because many of the nation’s low-cost carriers do no provide free luggage check-in.
Though low-cost carriers do offer a free luggage allowance, the maximum allowance is generally less than that of full-service carriers, it said.
The agency said the airliners are now required to inform customers how much they would be charged for the luggage check-in service on the international flight tickets, and whether they would be charged for the number of items or for the weight of the luggage.
In addition, the information would tell passengers if they would be charged for making changes to their flight tickets and how much the processing fee would be if such charge is applicable.
The new notice would also indicate that any refund for international flight tickets should be completed within three months of the application, adding that the procedure should take no longer than six months to complete.
In related news, the CAA yesterday said the government welcomes any low-cost carriers that wish to set up their operational base in Taiwan, adding that it also welcomes domestic airlines to set up a low-cost carriers division in the country.
According to the CAA, the market share for low-cost carriers has increased from 0.3 percent in 2005 to about 3 percent last year.
CAA Director-General Jean Shen (沈啟) has confirmed that several low-cost carriers, such as Malaysia-based Air Asia, have expressed an interest in entering or expanding their market share in Taiwan.
The agency said low-cost carriers have helped increase the number of the inbound travelers to Taiwan and increased the number of travel options to the nation’s consumers.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift