The demolition of Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) should be premised upon Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport being upgraded and able to incorporate the capacity of the central Taipei airport, Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) said yesterday.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said he plans to hold a seminar on the possible removal of Taipei International Airport next month and he has invited the three presidential candidates to join the discussion and reveal their stances on the matter.
Mao, asked about the plan by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Huang Wei-che (黃偉哲) in the Legislative Yuan in Taipei yesterday, said Songshan airport, since its upgrade from a domestic airport to an international one in 2008, has been of great help to the development of the nation’s civil aviation and tourism industries.
“The conditions for the removal of Songshan airport are the completion of the third runway and the third terminal at Taoyuan airport,” Mao said.
“Taiwan’s flights would be immediately affected if the conditions are not met to incorporate the capacity of the Taipei airport before it is removed,” he said.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Jian-yu (陳建宇) said the demolition of Songshan airport should only be considered in 2030, as it is now an important part of the Southeast Asian tour network and is responsible for transportation to the nation’s outlying islands.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Eric Chu (朱立倫) said in Taoyuan yesterday that the short-term possibility of removing the airport is “very low,” as it would first require the completion of the construction of the Taoyuan Aerotropolis and the transportation infrastructure of northern Taiwan.
DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) also said that there are conditions to be met before the discussion could take place — the capacity of Taoyuan airport, the operation of the Mass Rapid Transit line connecting Taipei and Taoyuan airport, and measures responding to national security needs.
“If the DPP returns to government next year, we will invite the Taipei City Government and the relevant authorities to have a thorough conversation about the matter, which should be a mid or long-term project, rather than something which can be solved immediately,” Tsai said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the