Passenger volumes at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport showed double-digit growth in the first half of the year, faring better than other major airports in East and Southeast Asia.
Statistics from Taoyuan International Airport Corp showed that 16.68 million visitors used the airport from January to last month, up 13 percent from the same time last year. Passenger volume in May alone grew 21.74 percent compared with the same month last year, the highest among the past six months.
The airport operator said the dramatic increase in passenger numbers in May — a low season for travel — was due to the popularity of budget airlines and marketing campaigns launched by travel agencies and airline companies.
Because of these two factors, the number of outbound passengers rose 24.7 percent, with the top three travel destinations for Taiwanese tourists being Japan, China and Hong Kong.
Taiwanese visitors to Japan climbed almost 42 percent, the company said.
Inbound and transit passengers at Taoyuan airport expanded 21.31 percent and 5.47 percent respectively, with a majority of them arriving from China and Japan, as well as Hong Kong and Macau.
The number of Chinese tourists arriving through the free independent traveler program exceeded 500,000 in the past six months, marking a 100 percent increase from the same period last year.
The company said it has initiated a series of measures starting this month to cope with the rise in passengers, including increasing the number of cleaners for the airport’s restrooms as well as expanding safety inspection areas.
The airport operator said it plans to expand the service area in Terminal Two, with the construction expected to be completed within two years.
Passenger volumes at Taoyuan airport could reach 34 million this year, the company said.
Elsewhere, the number of passengers using Changi airport in Singapore and Narita airport in Japan grew 1.76 percent and 5.61 percent respectively between January and May.
Passengers using Hong Kong’s Chek Lap Kok airport and Incheon airport in South Korea were up by 6.3 percent and 7.8 percent respectively.
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,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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