China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空), the nation's largest carrier, and subsidiary Mandarin Airlines (華信航空) announced yesterday that they will work together to provide direct cross-strait charter flights during the Lunar New Year holidays.
From Feb. 13 to Feb. 25, the two carriers will provide a total of 16 round-trip flights, including eight on the Taipei-Shanghai route, two on the Taipei-Beijing route, four on the Taipei-Guangzhou route and two on the Kaohsiung-Shanghai route, the airlines said in a statement released yesterday.
Mandarin Airlines will begin the flights on Feb. 13 from Taipei to Shanghai, while CAL will start the services on Feb. 14 on the same route, the statement said.
Boeing 747-400 and Airbus A330-300 aircraft will be used for the charter flights, it added.
Passengers of China Airlines and Mandarin Airlines can use their tickets interchangeably on both airlines and can combine scheduled flights with the charter flights, the companies said.
Passengers with scheduled flight tickets can switch their tickets to charter flights after paying the price difference without handling fees, they said. Tickets for the charter flights are 4 percent to 7 percent higher than those for scheduled flights.
EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空), Taiwan's second-largest carrier, plans to fly eight round-trip charter flights, including six on the Taipei-Shanghai route and two on the Taipei-Beijing route, the carrier said in a separate release yesterday.
The Lunar New Year schedules of the three carriers are currently undergoing reviews by aviation authorities in both Taiwan and China.
Passengers who have joined the frequent flyer programs of the three airlines will be able to accumulate mileage on the charter flights.
CAL shares dropped 0.31 percent to close at NT$16.20 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday, while EVA Airways shares were up 1.02 percent to NT$14.85. Mandarin Airlines is not listed on the TAIEX.
Thanks to the recent drop in fuel prices, both CAL and EVA Airways had their ratings upgraded to "outperform" from "neutral" by Credit Suisse Group, Hong Kong-based analysts Karen Chan and Peter Hilton said in a note to investors dated Jan. 17.
The analysts said CAL would "also see improving operational quality with a better yield increase, thanks to its efforts in fleet rationalization and network building."
Credit Suisse forecast a profit of NT$1 billion (US$30.5 million) for CAL in the fourth quarter of last year and of NT$700 million for EVA Airways during the same period, it said.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
Property transactions in the nation’s six special municipalities plunged last month, as a lengthy Lunar New Year holiday combined with ongoing credit tightening dampened housing market activity, data compiled by local land administration offices released on Monday showed. The six cities recorded a total of 10,480 property transfers last month, down 42.5 percent from January and marking the second-lowest monthly level on record, the data showed. “The sharp drop largely reflected seasonal factors and tighter credit conditions,” Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) deputy research manager Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) said. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday fell in February this year, reducing
Taiwan has enough crude oil reserves for more than 100 days and sufficient natural gas reserves for more than 11 days, both above the regulatory safety requirement, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday, adding that the government would prioritize domestic price stability as conflicts in the Middle East continue. Overall, energy supply for this month is secure, and the government is continuing efforts to ensure sufficient supply for next month, Kung told reporters after meeting with representatives from business groups at the ministry in Taipei. The ministry has been holding daily cross-ministry meetings at the Executive Yuan to ensure
New vehicle sales in Taiwan plunged about 37 percent sequentially last month as the long Lunar New Year holiday and 228 Peace Memorial Day holiday cut short the number of working days, along with the lingering uncertainty over import tax cuts on US vehicles, market researcher U-Car said in a report yesterday. New car sales last month totaled 22,043, slumping from 35,073 units in January and down 19.89 percent from 37,515 in February last year, U-Car data showed. Sales of imported luxury cars, led by Mercedes-Benz, plummeted about 45 percent to 3,109 units last month from 5,663 units in the previous month,
RSS