TransAsia to Offer More Cross-Straits Flights

Taiwanese carrier TransAsia Airways is to launch five additional routes to China in November including new direct links from Kaohsiung in Southern Taiwan and Hualien in the East of the country. The expansion will occur during the first week of November, initially with the introduction of a three times weekly Taipei Taoyuan – Xuzhou link from November 1. This route is already served by Shanghai Airlines on a twice weekly basis and was a market of around 7,000 O&D passengers over the past year.

Two new routes will be introduced from Kaohsiung over the following days. These comprise a daily service to Hefei from November 2 and a daily rotation to Nanning from November 5. Meanwhile, new daily links to Hangzhou and Wuhan from Hualien will commence on November 3 and November 7, respectively. There are currently no scheduled flights on these four routes.

In the past year an estimated 621,000 O&D passengers flew between Taiwan and China, up 9.2 per cent on the previous 12 month period with increasing links between the two countries making international travel a lot easier. There are currently more than 530 weekly Cross-Straits flights offering around 101,000 weekly seats in each direction.

TransAsia Airways already serves 13 routes with links from Taipei Taoyuan to Chnagsha and Shanghai Pu Dong; from Taipei’s downtown Songshan Airport to Chongqing, Fuzhou, Hangzhou, Hefei, Shanghai Hongqiao, Shanghai Pu Dong, Tianjin and Wuhan, and from Kaohsiung to Changsha, Fuzhou and Xiamen. It accounts for 5.5 per cent of the weekly seat capacity between Taiwan and China and around 6.0 per cent of the demand, carrying an estimated 37,000 O&D passengers in the past year.