About 22 percent of Southeast Asian air travelers transited through Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport before heading to destinations in North America in 2024, surpassing those transiting via Tokyo and Hong Kong, a study released yesterday by the Institute of Transportation showed.
Taoyuan airport also exceeded Tokyo and Hong Kong in the number of transit passengers to San Francisco, with about 760,000 headed to the northern California city in 2024.
The think tank, under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, analyzed available data for 2024 from the International Air Transport Association, a non-governmental airline trade association based in Montreal.
Photo courtesy of Taoyuan International Airport Corp
The institute has yet to release data for last year.
The study focused on how Southeast Asians traveling to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Ontario, California; Seattle, Chicago, Houston, New York, Vancouver and Toronto via Taoyuan, Incheon International Airport in South Korea, Tokyo Narita Airport, Japan’s Haneda Airport and Shanghai Pudong International Airport.
Of the 9.82 million Southeast Asians passengers traveling to the nine North American cities via the five Asia-Pacific hubs, 22.1 percent transited through Taoyuan, lower than Incheon (23.6 percent), but higher than Haneda (21.6 percent), Narita (12.6 percent), Hong Kong (17.1 percent) and Shanghai (3 percent), the study found.
Meanwhile, the number of travelers transiting through Taoyuan to San Francisco reached 759,927 in 2024, surpassing those flying through other Asia-Pacific hubs.
Passengers to Los Angeles transiting through Taoyuan also reached 491,339, exceeded only by Narita and about the same as Incheon.
The study also found that 74.7 percent of passengers on Taoyuan-San Francisco flights were transit passengers.
“Compared with other major Asia-Pacific hubs, we found that Taoyuan has a particularly strong competitive edge in the transit services to San Francisco. It is also relatively competitive in transit services to Los Angeles and Seattle,” institute secretary-general Yeh Tsu-hung (葉祖宏) told a news conference in Taipei.
“However, Taoyuan still lagged behind other competitors in terms of transit passengers to New York,” Yeh said, adding that Taiwan has room to improve in terms of transit passengers to the US east coast.
Aside from launching new direct flights, Taoyuan can increase its transit passengers to airports in the US and Canada by increasing regional flights with high demand to shorten transit times and form strategic alliances with other airlines, the institute said.
The institute has suggested in previous studies that Taiwanese international flight carriers consider launching direct flights to Washington or Boston.
EVA Airways earlier this year announced that it is scheduled to launch direct flights to the US capital in June.
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