Far Eastern Air Transport Corp (FAT, 遠東航空) on Saturday said that it has suspended a plan to take delivery of two planes until civil aviation authorities give permission for the airline to resume services.
FAT spokeswoman Lu Chi-rong (盧紀融) confirmed that the halt to operations has led to the suspension of a plan to take delivery of its seventh and eighth twin-turboprop ATR 72-600s previously scheduled for this month.
FAT — which this month announced that it was stopping services, citing years of losses and difficulty raising funds, before saying a day later that it wanted to restore services, as it had sourced new funding — is waiting for the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) to review its petition to resume flights.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) has said that the CAA would review the petition based on professional opinions and would not relax its standards.
The carrier sent a delegation to France to take delivery of the two planes, but due to the halt in operations, the plan was temporarily suspended, Lu said.
Delivery would resume depending on the progress of the CAA review, she said.
FAT’s seventh ATR 72-600 had been scheduled to take off from France today and land in Taiwan on Friday, while delivery of the eighth had been scheduled for shortly after that, she said.
However, the service stoppage has made those plans unlikely for the time being, Lu said.
On Dec. 12, FAT vice president Huang Yu-chi (黃育祺) said that the carrier had a shortfall of about NT$30 million (US$993,049) and therefore stopped services from the next day.
However, FAT chairman Chang Kang-wei (張綱維) on Dec. 13 said that the carrier was seeking to restart flights. On Dec. 14, the carrier submitted the petition to the CAA.
CAA Standards Division Director Clark Lin (林俊良) said that the CAA canceled a plan to send a delegation to France to inspect the new aircraft.
Since July 2017, FAT has taken delivery of six ATR 72-600s, which, along with the two that were to arrive this month, were expected to replace its aging McDonnell Douglas fleet.
Prior to its Dec. 12 announcement, FAT had been operating 62 domestic and international routes to 47 cities in Southeast Asia, South Korea and Japan.
As of Friday, FAT had processed refund applications for about 165,000 tickets filed by customers, it said.
Established in 1957, the Taipei-based company declared bankruptcy in May 2008, but resumed operations three years later and completed bankruptcy restructuring in October 2015.
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