China Airlines Ltd’s (CAL, 中華航空) board of directors yesterday approved a plan to spend up to US$4.6 billion to purchase 16 Boeing Co 787-9 airplanes, with delivery scheduled to start in 2025.
The airline expects to receive all 16 new planes by the end of 2027, it said.
As the new planes arrive, the company would at the same time retire its older Airbus SE 330-300 aircraft for medium-haul services.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
The new wide-body Boeing aircraft equipped with General Electric Co’s next-generation engines would be used mainly for regional routes, such as flights between Taiwan and Australia, as well as New Zealand, CAL said.
Asked why it did not opt for a similar wide-body plane such as the Airbus 330neo, CAL said that its primary concerns were fuel efficiency, maintenance costs and cargo capacity, as well as jet design and market acceptance.
In particular, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, CAL needs to make allowances for a new business model in which a passenger jet might also be utilized for air cargo business, it said, adding that the cabin of a 787-9 jet can accommodate 36 containers, much more than other wide-body aircraft.
The addition of the Boeing 787-9 planes would boost CAL’s cargo capacity, the airline said.
“Overall, our purchase task force gave Boeing 787-9 passenger jets the highest score among all wide-body aircraft, believing that the airplane would have the best utility,” the airline said.
CAL in September last year set up the task force responsible for determining the purchase of new aircraft and recently finalized its conclusion, the airline said.
The 787-9 aircraft’s fuel consumption and carbon emissions are 20 percent lower than that of older passenger jets, which would help the airline reach its goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050, it said.
The deal includes eight options allowing CAL to buy the bigger 787-10 aircraft if necessary, it said.
CAL has 65 passenger jets and 21 cargo jets.
CAL would be the second Taiwanese airline to purchase Boeing’s 787-9 aircraft, after EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) in 2018.
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
DOMESTIC COMPONENT: Huang identified several Taiwanese partners to be a key part of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin supply chain, including Asustek, Hon Hai and Wistron Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), addressing crowds at the company’s biggest annual event, unveiled a variety of new products while predicting that its flagship artificial intelligence (AI) processors would help generate US$1 trillion in sales through next year. During a two-and-a-half-hour keynote address, Huang announced plans to push deeper into central processing units (CPUs) — Intel Corp’s home turf — and introduced semiconductors made with technology acquired from start-up Groq Inc. The company even said it was developing chips for data centers in outer space. At the heart of Huang’s speech was the message that demand for computing power
OPTIMISTIC: Inflation still has a chance of remaining below the central bank’s 2 percent alert level, as Taiwan’s economy is resilient with healthy exports, the NDC minister said Taiwan’s inflation could exceed 2 percent this year if oil prices continue to surge amid escalating tensions in the Middle East, prompting the government to reassess its economic outlook, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. DGBAS Minister Chen Shu-tzu (陳淑姿) told lawmakers at a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee that the agency’s earlier growth forecast of 1.68 percent in the consumer price index (CPI) and 7.71 percent for GDP this year did not account for the ongoing Middle East conflict and would need revision, if tensions persist. The previous forecast assumed an average international crude price of
ELECTRIC DREAMS: Smart cities would use ‘virtual power plants,’ which integrate idle electricity use from households, businesses and factories, Asustek said Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) yesterday showcased key components of its artificial intelligence (AI)-driven smart city initiatives at a trade show in Taipei, eyeing new business opportunities as cities develop sovereign AI infrastructure. Advances in generative, multimodal and physical AI are driving cities toward a new phase of “sovereign AI,” Asustek cochief executive officer Samson Hu (胡書賓) told reporters on the sidelines of the Smart City Summit and Expo at Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center’s Hall 2. The company showcased its “AI City” framework, which comprises three layers — computing infrastructure centered on AI servers, AI models and a platform layer for data processing
RSS