As tourism between Taiwan and China continues to shrink, Taiwanese airlines are turning their attention to northeast Asia this summer, slashing fares by about 30 percent compared with last year.
Summer round-trip airfares to Tokyo have dropped to between NT$4,988 and NT$8,282, compared with between NT$15,000 and NT$18,000 last summer.
This is in part due to a 30 percent increase in the number of flights from Taiwan to northeast Asia compared with last summer, and a 40 percent increase to Japan alone, Civil Aeronautics Administration statistics shows.
China Airlines (CAL), the nation’s largest airline, has also increased its weekly flights between Taipei and Seoul from 70 last summer to 106 this summer.
China’s three major state-run airlines are also reducing their fares, but maintaining their focus on Taiwanese travelers.
China Southern Airlines Co is selling round-trip tickets for as low as NT$4,500 for flights between Taiwan and Shanghai, Shenzhen, Nanning and Zhangjiajie, until Sept. 25 for travel between July 1 and Sept. 30.
The airline is also promoting low fares from Taiwan to New Zealand and Australia via Guangzhou, with prices going as low as NT$9,000.
For flights between Taiwan and Europe, the carrier’s round-trip fare starts at NT$10,000. It is also selling round-trip tickets to the US and Canada for NT$12,000.
Another Chinese carrier, China Eastern Airlines Corp, is promoting summer fares for as low as NT$3,888 for flights between Taiwan and Shanghai until July 30.
People flying to Shanghai can also opt for Air China Ltd’s round-trip fare of NT$5,000, a 40 percent discount compared with recent years, for travel between July 1 and Sept. 30.
Senior executives at Taiwanese airlines have criticized the cutthroat competition, saying the discounts being offered by Chinese carriers are unlikely to increase passenger load by more than 10 percent and might result in substantial revenue losses.
However, CAL has joined the competition, offering round-trip flights between Taipei and Shanghai for NT$4,988 until the end of September, for travel up to Dec. 30.
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