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.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
Tourism in Kenting fell to a historic low for the second consecutive year last year, impacting hotels and other local businesses that rely on a steady stream of domestic tourists, the latest data showed. A total of 2.139 million tourists visited Kenting last year, down slightly from 2.14 million in 2024, the data showed. The number of tourists who visited the national park on the Hengchun Peninsula peaked in 2015 at 8.37 million people. That number has been below 2.2 million for two years, although there was a spike in October last year due to multiple long weekends. The occupancy rate for hotels
RSS