The Philippines is considering a compromise proposal to end a deadlock with Taiwan in negotiations over a disputed air route, a Manila official said yesterday.
The Philippines has said it will cancel the existing air agreement between the two governments, thereby shutting down the Manila-Taipei route, if they fail to come to agreement on the pact by a Sept. 30 deadline, said Franklin Ebdalin, assistant foreign secretary in charge of aviation issues.
Ebdalin said the compromise being considered by the Philippines involves a prohibition on advertising by airlines that passengers could fly beyond either Taipei or Manila to third countries such as the US.
Debt-laden Philippine Airlines (PAL) has been unable to do as much business on the route as the two Taiwanese airlines in question and says they are abusing the air services agreement to gain an unfair advantage.
The two airlines, China Airlines and EVA Airways, have been poaching its business by selling seats cheaply to people who fly to Taipei to catch connecting Tai-wanese flights to other destinations, according to PAL.
If Taiwan accepts the conditions, the Philippines might accept Taiwan's demand that each side be allowed 6,000 passengers a week on the route, Ebdalin said in an interview with the SNN television network.
``They claim that it's not in the [current] agreement so they have the right, we claim that it is not in the agreement so they don't have the right,'' he said.
A failure to meet the Sept. 30 deadline will actually benefit PAL, Ebdalin said. Philippine passengers traveling to or from the US then ``will have no choice but take Philippine Airlines,'' he said.
Meanwhile, the Taipei office of Philippine Airlines yesterday said the final decision would be made sometime next week.
Sung Li-min (
Sung said PAL would insist on reducing the seats from the current 9,600 to 4,000 as this was the only way for PAL to survive.
Negotiations between PAL, China Airlines and EVA Airways have failed to reach an agreement during the past one-and-a-half months following the breakdown of talks in early August. At that time, Manila announced that it was to terminate at the end of September a bilateral aviation agreement signed in 1996, accusing the two Taiwan carriers of carrying more passengers than previously agreed upon.
Ebdalin said the Philippines would only agree to allow EVA Airways and China Airlines to carry the requested number of passengers if "extra conditions" were to be put in place to prohibit the Taiwanese carriers from carrying passengers to a third country.
"The problem is [the Taiwanese carriers] don't want to accept any classification of passengers," he said. "They want to be free to fly any passengers, which is not allowed under the current air services agreement."
The Philippines also plans to re-negotiate air services agreements with South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong amid efforts to eliminate what they see as unfair competition for PAL, which closed for 13 days in September 1998 due to losses and labor problems.
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