Malaysian long-haul budget airline Air Asia will start flying to New Zealand early next year with direct flights from Kuala Lumpur to Christchurch, aviation officials confirmed yesterday.
“This is a really positive development for not only Christchurch, but for the wider New Zealand economy,” said Norm Thompson, deputy chief executive of the New Zealand flag carrier Air New Zealand. “The South East Asian market will certainly benefit from increased competition.”
Christchurch, the main city in New Zealand’s South Island has been lobbying AirAsia X for most of the year after an airport executive saw a media report that the Malaysian carrier had New Zealand in its sights.
The government-owned Malaysia Airlines already flies to the main North Island city of Auckland.
Christchurch city mayor Bob Parker told the Press newspaper from Kuala Lumpur, where the agreement was signed on Friday, that the service would be launched about March with four return flights a week.
An independent assessment had shown the new service could create 600 to 700 jobs and bring up to NZ$70 million (US$52 million) to the city, which was recently devastated by an earthquake.
“I think we’ve achieved an absolute coup for our city ... we beat out Auckland, we actually beat out Sydney and it’s going to revolutionize for a lot of Kiwis flying into the international marketplace because it’s going to introduce incredibly low fares,” Parker said.
Christchurch International Airport chief executive Jim Boult said details of the new service would be revealed in the near future.
FALLING BEHIND: Samsung shares have declined more than 20 percent this year, as the world’s largest chipmaker struggles in key markets and plays catch-up to rival SK Hynix Samsung Electronics Co is laying off workers in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand as part of a plan to reduce its global headcount by thousands of jobs, sources familiar with the situation said. The layoffs could affect about 10 percent of its workforces in those markets, although the numbers for each subsidiary might vary, said one of the sources, who asked not to be named because the matter is private. Job cuts are planned for other overseas subsidiaries and could reach 10 percent in certain markets, the source said. The South Korean company has about 147,000 in staff overseas, more than half
TECH PARTNERSHIP: The deal with Arizona-based Amkor would provide TSMC with advanced packing and test capacities, a requirement to serve US customers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is collaborating with Amkor Technology Inc to provide local advanced packaging and test capacities in Arizona to address customer requirements for geographical flexibility in chip manufacturing. As part of the agreement, TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, would contract turnkey advanced packaging and test services from Amkor at their planned facility in Peoria, Arizona, a joint statement released yesterday said. TSMC would leverage these services to support its customers, particularly those using TSMC’s advanced wafer fabrication facilities in Phoenix, Arizona, it said. The companies would jointly define the specific packaging technologies, such as TSMC’s Integrated
An Indian factory producing iPhone components resumed work yesterday after a fire that halted production — the third blaze to disrupt Apple Inc’s local supply chain since the start of last year. Local industrial behemoth Tata Group’s plant in Tamil Nadu, which was shut down by the unexplained fire on Saturday, is a key linchpin of Apple’s nascent supply chain in the country. A spokesperson for subsidiary Tata Electronics Pvt yesterday said that the company would restart work in “many areas of the facility today.” “We’ve been working diligently since Saturday to support our team and to identify the cause of the fire,”
Sales RecORD: Hon Hai’s consolidated sales rose by about 20 percent last quarter, while Largan, another Apple supplier, saw quarterly sales increase by 17 percent IPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) on Saturday reported its highest-ever quarterly sales for the third quarter on the back of solid global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) globally, said it posted NT$1.85 trillion (US$57.93 billion) in consolidated sales in the July-to-September quarter, up 19.46 percent from the previous quarter and up 20.15 percent from a year earlier. The figure beat the previous third-quarter high of NT$1.74 trillion recorded in 2022, company data showed. Due to rising demand for AI, Hon Hai said its cloud and networking division enjoyed strong sales
RSS