The Civil Aeronautic Administration (CAA) is scheduled to meet with the Consumer Protection Committee (CPC) of the Executive Yuan next week to discuss whether passengers on budget airlines should be allowed to take their own food aboard.
Statistics from the administration showed that the nation would have 16 low-cost carriers by the end of this year. While the budget airlines attract passengers with inexpensive tickets, passengers need to pay additional fees to check in luggage or for meals.
Consumer complaints have begun to emerge after the nation’s first low-cost carrier, Tigerair Taiwan, launched flights last month. Passengers complained that the on-board meals are too expensive and that they were not allowed to take their own food onto the flights. They also complained that they were not informed of the airline’s regulations banning passengers from consuming food that was not purchased aboard.
The administration said it is meeting with CPC officials next week to discuss ways to require the low-cost carriers to clearly disclose the relevant information on the consumption of outside food during flights. The information must be displayed on the airlines’ Web sites, it said.
The administration said Tigerair Taiwan, Scoot, Air Asia X, HK Express and Air Asia Berhad all have regulations banning passengers from taking food on board.
Jetstar, Vanilla Air, Peach Aviation and others do not have such regulations.
In response, Tigerair Taiwan said the airline has clearly stated the relevant regulations on its Web site, and its flight attendants only tell the passengers that the airline sells meals on board so they do not have to bring their own food.
It said that passengers bringing their own food will be asked to quickly finish meals to avoid inconveniencing other passengers and they will not be allowed to take strong-smelling food on board.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS