Starlux Airlines chairman Chang Kuo-wei (張國煒) could be fined for allowing an Internet celebrity to enter the cockpit during a flight to Los Angeles on April 26, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said yesterday.
The aviation authority said that it launched an investigation after it received a report that YouTuber Sam Chui (崔佳星) had posted a picture on Instagram of himself with Chang in the cockpit.
Chang, who is also a pilot, was serving as the captain of that flight.
Photo: CNA
CAA Flight Standards Division Director Wu Chia-jen (吳家珍) said that a flight is considered to be in operation as soon as cabin crew members are on board.
The company was also criticized for leaving more than 300 Taiwanese passengers stranded at Tokyo Narita International Airport on Saturday night after two of its returning flights to Taipei were delayed by crosswinds.
On Sunday, Chang told reporters that he did not sleep the night before as he caught a red-eye flight to Tokyo to handle the situation.
He later piloted one of the airlines’ A350 aircraft back to Taipei, prompting the agency to launch another investigation, as it suspected that Chang might have operated the aircraft when fatigued or worked overtime.
The aviation authority later combined the two investigations into one, as Chang was involved in both cases.
The company has been asked to provide information about the cases, the agency said, adding that CAA officials would interview Chang for further details.
“We have yet to complete the investigation, but we have ascertained Sam Chui had indeed entered the cockpit” during the flight to Los Angeles, CAA Director-General Lin Kuo-hsien (林國顯) told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee.
The Aircraft Flight Operation Regulations (根據航空器飛航作業管理規則) stipulate that non-cabin crew must obtain permission from the agency before entering the cockpit, but Starlux did not request such permission in advance, Lin said.
“We are investigating whether Chui entered the cockpit during the flight to Los Angeles. If so, Chang and the airline would be fined,” he said.
Chang could face a fine of NT$60,000 if he is found to have contravened the regulations, while the airline could be given a warning or a fine of NT$600,000, he said.
If Chang and the airline are fined, it would be the first penalty that Starlux received since it was founded in 2018.
It would also be the first time in Taiwan’s aviation history that a pilot and an airline are punished for allowing non-cabin crew to enter a cockpit.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
Labor rights groups yesterday called on the Ministry of Labor to protect migrant workers in Taiwan’s fishing industry, days after CNN reported alleged far-ranging abuses in the sector, including deaths and forced work. The ministry must enforce domestic labor protection laws on Taiwan-owned deep-sea fishing vessels, the Coalition for Human Rights for Migrant Fishers told a news conference outside the ministry in Taipei after presenting a petition to officials. CNN on Sunday reported that Taiwanese seafood giant FCF Co, the owners of the US-based Bumble Bee Foods, committed human rights abuses against migrant fishers, citing Indonesian migrant fishers. The alleged abuses included denying