Passengers on domestic off-peak flights can enjoy a 50 percent discount from next month, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said yesterday.
However, passengers are required to book tickets at least two weeks in advance, the agency added.
Domestic airlines are to offer about 12,000 tickets monthly, or 600 flights daily, with a discount of 45 percent to 50 percent, the agency said.
One-way tickets could drop below NT$1,000 with the discounts, the agency added.
For example, a one-way ticket from Taipei to Magong (馬公) would cost NT$984 and a ticket from Taipei to Hualien would cost NT$789 with the discounts.
CAA Deputy Director-General Fang Chih-wen (方志文) said that airlines are to set different off-peak hours for different flights.
In general, Fang said, off-peak hours for flights departing from Taiwan proper are in the afternoon, while off-peak hours for flights departing from the outlying islands, Hualien or Taitung are in the morning.
Fang said the discounts required changes to the tickets’ standard terms and conditions.
Currently, passengers on domestic flights can obtain a refund on their unused tickets within one year of their expiry.
While the amended contract keeps this term, it adds three conditions under which the tickets are automatically invalidated once passengers fail to use them on the date of travel.
The conditions include if the ticket was purchased for national holidays lasting more than three days or if it was bought with a discount of 30 percent or more.
The amended contract also stipulates some changes to processing fees on refunds.
Consumers are to be charged a refund processing fee of no more than 10 percent of the full-ticket price, which is the same as the current contract
However, if passengers purchase discounted tickets, the new contract requires the processing fee for a refund before the flight takes off to be no more than 25 percent of the discounted price and a refund after the flight leaves to be 50 percent.
Though the amended contract allows passengers to change the date of travel without a charge the first time, a processing fee equal to 10 percent of the ticket price would apply if the travel date is changed a second time.
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