Shortly after taking off from Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) en route to Kinmen yesterday, a TransAsia Airways ATR 72-600 airplane with 53 passengers and five crew members on board crashed into the Keelung River in Taipei.
The disaster shocked the nation, instantly reopening a decade-old debate as to whether Songshan airport ought to be relocated or simply closed down.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Chien-yu (陳建宇) was quick to delink the accident from the airport’s location, calling on the public not to confuse the two matters.
However, Chen, as well as President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration as a whole, are advised to look into the issue of the airport’s future more carefully and not let politics or ideology obscure their judgement.
Granted, the cause of the crash remains subject to investigation and the state of the aircraft itself has nothing to do with the location of the airport, but as many onlookers pointed out, it appears the pilots were trying to guide the plane along the Keelung River to avoid crashing into nearby residential areas. So while the location itself might not have had anything to do with the crash, but in the event of a crash — as was the case yesterday — the location of the airport certainly was a key factor in the scale of the resulting casualties and collateral damage.
When the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was in government, the Cabinet rejected developing Songshan for cross-strait flights because of environmental and national security concerns.
And as part of their campaigns for Taipei mayor, then-DPP candidates Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) in 2002 and Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) in 2006 pledged to relocate the airport outside the city and transform the site into Taipei’s “Central Park.”
Hsieh’s then-prospective Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) opponent Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) was himself a proponent of turning the airport site into a municipal park, a stance that later changed after he secured his party’s nomination.
Since Ma’s two terms as Taipei mayor, he has insisted that there should be an airport in the capital, and that it was important to develop it for cross-strait flights.
Songshan airport was Taiwan’s only international airport until 1979, when international flights were moved to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. Songshan became a domestic airport, only resuming international services in 2008 when cross-strait flights were launched, realizing what Ma termed a goal of transforming the airport into a “capital city business airport.”
Under Ma, the central government has positioned the airport as a key link in a “Northeast Asia Golden Flight Circuit” of city airports including Seoul, Shanghai and Tokyo, with former minister of transportation Yeh Kuang-shih (葉匡時) saying that Songshan could serve as a hub for flights to and from northeastern Asia.
However, one question that must be asked is: How can Songshan airport strive to be a regional hub given its small size?
Amid a global trend in which many cities are relocating airports out of their downtown areas, it appears the nation’s policymakers have a myopic view, seeing only the convenience of Songshan’s downtown location while ignoring other issues that are just as, if not more, important, such as safety.
Songshan’s location not only limits the city’s development and bombards residents with noise from aircraft, but dramatically boosts the likelihood of catastrophic casualties and damages in case of an accident.
In light of the yesterday’s crash, it is time for the Ma administration to give the matter serious thought and allow for a rational debate on the issue of whether the airport should be relocated or closed.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
RSS