Although China Airlines' (CAL) competitors said yesterday that there hasn't been an immediate commercial impact from Saturday's crash, the Taipei Association for Travel Agents reached an agreement with CAL last night to allow passengers to have their CAL tickets reimbursed free of any service charge.
Yao Ta-kuang (
As for flights between Taipei and Hong Kong, employees with Cathay Pacific Airways told the Taipei Times yesterday that while their ticket counters have received more inquiries, they have not yet experienced an increase in passengers on the route.
Both China Airlines and Cathay Pacific employees said it would be some time before the impact of the crash on sales could be assessed.
"For the past two days, calls to our ticketing counter have increased but there hasn't been a clear change in the number of passengers," said Mimi Chen (陳怡瑄), assistant corporate communication manager for Cathay Pacific.
"Since most passengers would have had their schedules set some time before [the CAL crash], we haven't felt an immediate impact."
According to staff at the CAL ticket counter at CKS International Airport, over the last two days, 10 percent of passengers on the airlines' Southeast Asia routes did not take their scheduled flights.
One ticket counter employee, surnamed Tsai, said that number could be expected to increase as time goes on.
Cheryl Yeh, a public relations person with CAL, pointed out it's harder for passengers to change their itineraries on short notice
An employee at EVA Airways' ticket counter, surnamed Lee, also told the Taipei Times that he has heard from colleagues that customers have called for the past two days to ask whether it would be possible to change their China Airlines tickets to EVA.
However, Lee said that in terms of the Taipei-Hong Kong route, the crash accident would have a more direct impact on Cathay Pacific because it has far more flights on the route than EVA.
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