Tickets drop NT$1000 for cross-strait flights

Lin Hsin-der, deputy director general of the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, made the estimate during a recent seminar on new opportunities and challenges after the second-round talks between Chairman P.K. Chiang of Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and Chairman Chen Yunlin of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits.

During the Chiang-Chen meeting in early November in Taipei, they signed four pacts, including one allowing airlines of both sides of the strait to operate direct charter flights between major cities of both sides per day instead of flying over the air space of a third area as is practiced now.

Lin said at the seminar, held Thursday by the Institute of Transportation under the MOTC, that a direct flight between Taoyuan and Shanghai will take only 82 minutes for one trip, for a cut of 62 minutes from the original 144 minutes required for also flying over the airspace of Hong Kong.

But he said after checking airline companies operating the cross-strait flights, they’re willing to cut the passenger ticket fare by only NT$1,000 to NT$2,000, although they can save one hour of fuel oil consumption.

TransAsia Airways, for instance, said that in case the flight time is cut by one hour, the fuel oil consumption of 3,500 liters can be saved, thus saving a cost of a little more than NT$100,000. If the savings are shared by 180 passengers per flight, then each passenger can be allocated only NT$600 to NT$700. Accordingly, airline firms can hardly cut too much off passenger ticket prices after direct charter flights officially kick off.

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