Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, the nation’s main international gateway, could record 30 million passenger trips this year, surpassing a previous forecast of 28 million amid a recovery of the global aviation market, the airport’s operator said on Friday.
This year’s estimated passenger volume would be 66.6 percent of the volume recorded in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic, Taoyuan International Airport Corp senior vice president Lee Chun-te (李俊德) said.
The airport recorded 21.88 million passenger trips in the first eight months of this year, which were 8.92 million outbound journeys, 8.83 million inbound journeys, 4.05 million transfers and 64,000 transits, Lee told a news conference.
Photo: Chen Hsin-yu, Taipei Times
That total is about 66.6 percent of the 2019 level, Lee said, adding that market demand during the past two months has seen a significant growth in flights connecting North America, Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
However, air travel across the Taiwan Strait remained sluggish compared with other regions during the summer vacation, with passenger volume reaching only 1.43 million (including to Hong Kong and Macau), which is half the amount recorded during the same period in 2019, he said.
Boarding numbers should improve as Taiwan reopened its borders to some Chinese tourists entering from a third location on Sept. 1.
Chinese nationals living abroad, in Hong Kong or Macau can apply to enter Taiwan as tourists, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said last month.
The MAC’s announcement came as travel ties between Taiwan and China have been largely frozen over the past three years, partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
China’s government halted independent travel to Taiwan on Aug. 1, 2019, citing the poor state of cross-strait relations. It suspended group travel to Taiwan in 2020.
Meanwhile, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said on May 19 that Chinese travel agencies would be allowed to resume business involving Taiwan group tourists with immediate effect.
At the time, Taiwan declined to lift its restrictions on Chinese tourists entering, saying that Beijing was still restricting outbound travel to Taiwan, and that the decision should have been reached through bilateral negotiations.
In 2019, about 93,000 Chinese nationals living in a third location traveled to Taiwan as tourists, data from the National Immigration Agency showed.
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