Apex Flight Academy yesterday announced that it is branching out into the general aviation service market, adding that its airline is scheduled to begin operations next year after completing the required certification review.
The nation’s first and only flight training school in March secured the Civil Aeronautics Administration’s (CAA) approval to establish an office in preparation for the launch of Apex Aviation, a new airline offering domestic flights.
Since March, the company has been undergoing a five-stage certification review as per the Regulations of Civil Air Transport Enterprise (民用航空運輸業管理規則), it said.
Photo courtesy of Hualien County Government
The company’s first aircraft, a Tecnam P2012 Traveller, also landed at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday.
“With the arrival of our first aircraft, we are about to enter stage four of the review. We expect to complete the review by the beginning of next year and start the business afterward,” Apex said.
The twin-engine utility aircraft, which is designed and manufactured by Italian firm Costruzioni Aeronautiche Tecnam, passed safety certifications by the US Federal Aviation Administration and the EU Aviation Safety Agency, the company said.
The cost of building a Tecnam P2012 Traveller is more than NT$110 million (US$3.96 million), it said, adding that Apex Aviation is the first Asian buyer of the aircraft.
The aircraft would initially be used to offer air tours of the East-Rift Valley spanning Hualien to Taitung counties, the coastline along the East Coast, and Green Island and Orchid Island, the company said.
“We hope that the air tours we provide will not only help boost the growth of the local tourism industry, but help market the scenic attractions to the world and draw more tourists from overseas,” Apex Flight Academy chairman Wilson Kao (高健祐) said.
In other news, the CAA recorded 13 breaches of civil aviation regulations committed by drone operators and eight by paramotor users from January to last month.
Of the 13 cases involving drones, four did not file applications in advance and were fined NT$1.64 million in total, CAA Deputy Director-General Clark Lin (林俊良) said.
Drone operators in the other nine cases were granted permission to fly their craft, but were fined for various reasons, from failing to follow the preapproved flight plans to flying drones without notifying air traffic controllers and airport terminals ahead of time, Lin said.
Of the eight cases involving paramotors, one is being handled by the Ministry of National Defense for trespassing in a military zone in September and breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), he said.
In the middle of last month, a policeman was found to have illegally paraglided around a high-voltage tower in Taichung, Lin added.
People contravening the drone regulations can be fined between NT$10,000 and NT$1.5 million, while illegal paragliders can be fined between NT$60,000 and NT$300,000, Lin 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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater