Taiwan's largest airline company, China Airlines, announced unexpectedly Wednesday a whopping 20-percent cut in rates for direct flights between Taiwan and four major Chinese cities including Shanghai, pressing other carriers to follow suit.
The rate cuts were the result of customer complaints of unreasonably high rates, legislators' criticism and pressure from the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) . They were also seen as a far-sighted scheme anticipating increased need for direct cross-strait flights and soaring demands to and from Shanghai in particular as the 2010 World Expo will be kicking off in May.
Taiwan's travel agents, however, were lukewarm about the lower prices. They said the reduced tickets were still higher than prices at the beginning of the year. For example, they said, the price for an economy seat on a direct Taipei-Shanghai round-trip flight increased by NT$4,000 over the past three months compared with the NT$3,700 cut introduced by China Airlines.
Source: Focustaiwan.tw
Posted by
Pankaj Kumar
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