The launch of regular cross-strait flights led to an increase in the total number of passengers, but the average occupancy rate has reached only slightly more than 60 percent, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said yesterday.
Taiwan and China launched regular cross-strait flights at the end of August following the third-round of cross-strait talks earlier this summer. The two agreed to provide a total of 270 cross-strait flights per week. CAA Deputy Director General Wang Te-ho (王德和) said yesterday that between Aug. 31 and Nov. 1, Taiwan’s airliners operated a total of 1,118 cross-strait flights, whereas Chinese airlines offered 1,142 flights.
The number of cross-strait flights offered each week varied between 253 and 258 flights, Wang said.
CAA statistics show that cross-strait flights carried a total of approximately 700,000 passengers, with the occupancy rate reaching 62.7 percent.
Wang said, however, that the number of cross-strait flight passengers had shown steady growth each week.
He said the average was about 46,000 each week when there were only daily charter flights. The number jumped to 78,000 per week after regular cross-strait flight service began.
“What we wanted to focus on was the trend in the market.” Wang said. “We can expect the market to grow if the curve continues to go upward.”
The CAA statistics also generated other findings. Flights to Songshan had the highest average occupancy rate, at 70 percent, followed by those to Taichung Airport and Taoyuan Airport. In China, Fuzhou topped Shanghai, with the highest average occupancy rate, at 78.8 percent, CAA statistics showed. Flights to Shanghai showed an occupancy rate of 75.8 percent, the statistics showed.
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