EVA Airways (長榮航空) yesterday announced that it plans to launch a new flight service to Washington in July, making it the first Taiwanese carrier to provide direct flights to the US capital.
The airline plans to provide four flights to Washington in the initial stage using Boeing 787-9s, EVA Airways president Clay Sun (孫嘉明) told reporters in Taipei.
The airline aims to attract more passengers to North America with the new service, and provide a transit option to Washington for travelers from around the region, Sun said.
Photo: Taipei Times
Currently, they must transit in Japan, South Korea or China, he said.
Washington is the center of politics and the military in the US, and home to many tourist attractions, including the White House, the US Capitol Building, museums and cherry blossoms, he said.
Sixty percent of the travelers on the airline’s North America flights are transit passengers, Sun said.
The Washington area is home to about 14,000 Taiwanese and 320,000 residents of Southeast Asian descent, he added.
The new service is not being added due to political pressure, Sun said.
“When launching a new flight service, the company considers factors such as fleet size and effectiveness. We are using Boeing 787s for flights to Washington before we receive Airbus 350-1000s,” he said.
When asked whether the airline is considering offering flights to Boston or other cities on the US east coast, Sun said that might be difficult.
Once flights to Washington are launched, the airline would have passenger services to 10 destinations in North America, with 98 weekly flights to the region, he said.
He also outlined plans to increase the frequency of other routes.
Services to Milan, Italy, are expected to be increased to daily flights starting on Friday, while flights to Aomori, Japan, are to increase to five to seven flights per week from March 29, and services to Busan would be raised to 10 weekly flights between Feb. 23 and March 28, Sun said.
To meet demand during the Lunar New Year holiday and the spring travel season, flights to Da Nang, Vietnam, would be increased to 12 per week through March 8. Services to Matsuyama in Japan’s Ehime Prefecture would rise to five flights per week from March 17 to April 12, while 14 to 16 flights per week would be offered to Fukuoka, Japan, through March 28. Services to Incheon, South Korea, would be expanded from 14 to 18 weekly flights through April 12.
The airline has no plans to launch any other new routes at this time, although it is evaluating adding services to Spain, Helsinki and India, Sun said.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS