The direct flights between Taipei Songshan international Airport and Haneda Airport in Tokyo, which will be released shortly, is expected to boost the domestic airline business, the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MTC) said Monday.
When the Songshan-Haneda flights start on October 31, visitors from Japan are likely to choose to fly from Taipei to the cities of the east coast of Hualien and Taitung, the MTC said.
“It will be very convenient for Japanese tourists traveling to Hualien by air from Taipei, which actually increase the demand for domestic flights to Hualien and Taitung,” said an official of the MTC.
Suggested that domestic airlines early to prepare the increase in business is expected that the eight daily flights between Songshan and Haneda start.
However, TransAsia Airways, which currently offers seven daily flights between Taipei and Hualien, said many Japanese visitors prefer taking the train to the east of Taiwan.
The airline said it usually has the largest Japanese passenger volume in its first two flights of the day and last night, and even then the Japanese visitors account for only about a third of the passengers on these flights.
Mandarin Airlines, which operates two daily flights between Taipei and Taitung, was not very optimistic about growth in demand, saying that Japanese tourists are currently not many flights between Taipei and Taitung.
Most groups of Japanese tourists prefer to take the high speed train from Taipei to Kaohsiung, a city in the south then fly from there to Hualien, the airline said. Japanese passengers on a flight daily Mandarin Kaohsiung, Hualien represent about 40 percent of the total, he said. (By Wang Shu-fen and Fanny Liu) ENDITEM / pc