ASIA is set to welcome another new budget carrier by end-2013 when Taiwan-based China Airlines launches its low-cost subsidiary.
Speaking to TTG Asia e-Daily on the sidelines of the AAPA 57th Assembly of Presidents in Hong Kong, CAL chairman, Sun Huang-Hsiang, said: “We are coming up with an LCC which will be launched soon, very likely by the end of this year. The mode of the company has not been totally decided, but we are definitely setting up a subsidiary.
“We will look at launching routes in both North-east and South-east Asia that are within four to five hours’ range,” he added, but declined to reveal further details of the new airline.
The Taiwanese carrier’s budget offshoot will benefit from the scrapping of a floor price on airfares – a move widely seen as conducive to the development of LCCs in China – and the development of a budget terminal in Beijing, as recently announced by the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
Similarly, the opening of cross-straits flights has spurred CAL’s development. Said Sun: “Direct service (to China) started from 2009 and we have grown quite rapidly. We are now flying to 28 cities in China, expanding from zero in the period of four years.
“Before the (open skies agreement with Japan), we had only eight cities and about 95 weekly flights to Japan. Now we fly to 12 cities and have 128 flights a week to Japan,” he added.
The airline will introduce more services to South Korea and secondary cities in South-east Asia, having commenced six flights a week to Busan in September and stepped up its frequencies to Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur.
Meanwhile, CAL – Taiwan’s largest carrier by fleet size – will roll out a renewal of its narrow-body fleet starting next year, in addition to an order of 10 Boeing 777s and 14 Airbus A350s, he revealed.
Earlier this month, Shanghai-based Juneyao Airlines said it was also looking to set up an LCC in Guangzhou (TTG Asia e-Daily, November 6, 2013), tentatively named Jiuyuan Airlines, or ‘nine-yuan’ Airlines.
