The fate of a flight service between Taipei and Hualien is hanging in the balance as Mandarin Airlines reported a loss of NT$15 million (US$467,202) within just two months after it took over operations from soon-to-be-dissolved TransAsia Airways.
China Airlines was asked by the Executive Yuan to temporarily take over TransAsia’s domestic and international routes until Feb. 15 after the latter unexpectedly suspended its service and subsequently announced that it would dissolve its operations in November last year.
Mandarin, a subsidiary of CAL, is now in charge of operating the routes between Taipei and Hualien, Taichung and Hualien and Kaohsiung and Hualien which were operated by TransAsia.
CAL chairman Ho Nuan-hsuan (何煖軒) said that when Mandarin launched its trial service to Hualien on Dec. 1 last year, the group said that it would fulfill its responsibility to society and would not suspend flights to Hualien.
However, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) confirmed that Mandarin has requested permission to reduce its number of weekday flights to Hualien or receive government subsidies to cover the aircraft landing fees so that its operational loss can be mitigated.
Mandarin has been asked to submit more concrete data after crunching some numbers, the CAA said.
The potential cancelation of the Taipei-Hualien route has upset the Hualien County Government.
The central government cannot cancel the service without considering the impacts on east coast residents, it said, adding that the Suhua Highway and railway transportation on the east coast could very be easily be disrupted during typhoons or heavy rainfall.
CAA statistics showed that the average passenger occupancy rate last month of the Taipei-Hualien flights was about 44 percent, while the occupancy rate of the Taichung-Hualien flight was about 44 percent.
The financial losses incurred operating the domestic flights have also affected the distribution of cross-strait flights previously operated by TransAsia.
Prior to the dissolution of its business, TransAsia owned the right to operate some profitable flight routes, particularly those from the Taipei International Airport (Songshan) to Shanghai.
In addition to domestic flights, CAL has also been requested to temporarily take over the cross-strait flights previously operated by TransAsia and is submitting its request to the Chinese government.
However, the meetings among the carriers arranged by CAA reportedly failed to reach a consensus, as the carriers showed a general lack of interest in operating more cross-strait flights, following Beijing’s decision to withdraw the time slots allocated to TransAsia aircraft in Shanghai Hongqiao Airport, and the decline in the number of Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan due to an impasse in cross-strait relations.
Carriers were also said to be intimidated by the administration’s policy of “tying the lean meat with the fat meat,” meaning that carriers getting the more profitable routes must fly some of the less profitable ones as well.
In response, CAA said the cross-subsidization would continue to be the main way to distribute aviation routes among carriers, adding that it aims to finish distributing the former TransAsia flights among other carriers before Feb. 15.
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