Budget airlines are expected to serve more passengers than ever in Taiwan this year, with the number rising to more than 10 million, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said.
The 21 low-cost carriers (LCCs) operating flights to and from Taiwan last year carried 9.02 million passengers, accounting for 16.6 percent of the nation’s total airline traffic, CAA statistics showed.
That number should exceed 10 million this year given the 30 to 50 percent market share airlines have on routes connecting Taiwan to Southeast Asia, Japan and South Korea — areas where inbound and outbound tourism continues to grow, CAA officials said.
Jetstar Asia was the first LCC to offer flights in Taiwan when it began operating in 2004. By 2012, the number of passengers using budget airlines in Taiwan had passed the 1-million mark, a figure that has grown rapidly since, CAA data showed.
As more LCCs have entered the Taiwan market, the number of passengers using them has soared, from 4.7 million in 2015 and 7.2 million in 2016 to 9.02 million last year.
Associate professor Alex Lu (盧衍良), of Kainan University’s Department of Air Transportation, said that budget airlines have flourished over the past 10 years because of the widening gap between the rich and the poor, and because Taiwan’s convenient geographic location has made it attractive to these carriers.
Tigerair Taiwan, a wholly owned subsidiary of China Airlines and Taiwan’s only domestic budget airline, has established itself as the nation’s market leader with a 23.81 percent share of total LCC passengers served in January, CAA figures showed.
It was followed by Singapore-based Scoot Airlines with an 11.82 percent share, Japan-based Vanilla Air (8.53 percent), Japan’s Peach Aviation (7.82 percent), Vietnam-based VietJet Air (6.70 percent), and South Korea’s Air Busan (5.19 percent), they showed.
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