Cathay Pacific Airways yesterday announced that it would resume services to southern Taiwan by offering two flights from Kaohsiung to Hong Kong this month, starting on Saturday next week.
The airline’s subsidiary Cathay Dragon operated the Kaohsiung-Hong Kong route, but suspended services on Feb. 13 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The subsidiary ceased operations on Oct. 21.
Photo courtesy of Cathay Pacific Airways
Cathay Pacific said that the resumption shows its unwavering commitment to serving passengers in southern Taiwan.
It is to use an Airbus 330-300 aircraft for the two flights, with the first one leaving on Saturday next week and the second one on Nov. 28.
The plane is to depart Hong Kong at 8:50am and arrive in Kaohsiung at 10:20am, and then leave Kaohsiung at 11:20am and arrive in Hong Kong at 12:55pm, it said.
Schedules for the Kaohsiung-Hong Kong flights in the next few months would be arranged based on market demand, it said.
Cathay Pacific currently offers four flights per week to Hong Kong from the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.
In related news, United Airlines said earlier this week that from Dec. 5, it would increase its flights to San Francisco from Taipei from three to five.
The Chicago-based airline resumed Taipei-San Francisco flights on Tuesday last week after having suspended the service for about seven months.
Under the new flight schedule, flights to San Francisco would leave from Taipei on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.
From San Francisco, flights to Taipei would depart on Mondays Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays.
The increased services show that there is steady and reliable demand for passenger and cargo services between Taipei and San Francisco, United Airlines managing director for greater China and Korea Walter Dias said in a statement.
The airline will continue to explore growth opportunities and facilitate air services between Taiwan and the US, Dias added.
In other developments, there are a few conditions that need to be met before Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft could be allowed to land at the nation’s airports or fly through the nation’s airspace, a source familiar with the process said.
Taiwan in March last year joined other nations around the world in suspending all commercial operations of the Boeing 737 Max aircraft following an Indonesian Lion Air crash in October 2018 and an Ethiopian Airlines crash last year.
No Taiwanese airlines own Boeing 737-MAX 8 aircraft.
Media reports said that the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) could announce safety certification of the grounded jetliner as soon as Wednesday next week, and that the agency is to approve new training for pilots and set new maintenance requirements to ensure the planes can return to service.
“Boeing must state what changes it has made to address safety issues that have been identified and convince airlines as well as aviation authorities around the world that such issues no longer exist,” the source said, adding that Boeing and the FAA have yet to release relevant information about the corrective measures.
The government would only consider evaluating if it should allow the aircraft to operate in Taiwan after it has reviewed and accepted the data, the source said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching