With last Saturday's China Airlines crash still clear in their minds, legislators yesterday mulled a wide range of responses, from beefing up protections of consumer rights to the replacement of old helicopters.
PFP legislators Lee Hung-chun (
According to the legislators, consumers should have the right to this information before boarding a plane and the right to reject planes that are unfit for flying.
This information, the lawmakers argue, should include the conditions, date of manufacture, maintenance record and total flying time of the aircraft as well as the flying experience of its pilots.
Under the proposed amendments, airlines failing to make the information public would face punishments such as having their planes grounded, having their air-worthy certificates revoked and being fined up to NT$3 million.
In the case of a severe offense, the Civil Aeronautics Administration could order an airline to suspend business partially or completely and even cancel its business license, according to the proposal.
In another initiative, a group of KMT legislators, led by Chiang Yi-wen (
According to the KMT lawmakers, the 30-year-old helicopters were acquired by the administration from the army and are not designed for rescue missions.
They criticized the government for treating human life carelessly by allowing the aircraft to continue this type of service.
Meanwhile, DPP legislators Charles Chiang (江昭儀) and Lee Chen-nan (李鎮楠) said that the lack of flight safety awareness is a widespread problem in Taiwan, where a total of 16 major air accidents have occurred over the past three years.
With an air accident taking place on average every 2.2 months, the China Airlines crash is only the tip of the iceberg, Chiang and Lee said.
Pointing the finger at the Aviation Safety Council, they said the high accident rate indicates that the council has done only a "perfunctory" job and that council's managing director, Yong Kay (戎凱), should step down to take responsibility for the situation.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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