iscover
China Airlines plans to offer daily flights from Taipei to Brisbane and Auckland by the end of 2017.
Brisbane Airport said on Friday the Skyteam alliance member would add an extra three weekly Taipei-Brisbane-Auckland flights from December 2017, bringing the current four times a week schedule to daily.
The route is served with Airbus A330 equipment.
China Airlines general manager for Brisbane said the move to a daily service reflected the growing number of travellers between Australia and Taiwan.
Further, the extra flights would offer more options for travellers heading to the rest of Asia, Europe or North America via China Airlines’ Taipei hub.
“Our evening departure from Brisbane to Taipei means travellers can relax overnight and make easy onwards connections the next morning,” Chang said.
China Airlines serves Brisbane-Taipei alongside fellow Taiwanese flag carrier EVA Air.
Brisbane Airport chief executive Julieanne Alroe noted the number of Taiwanese visitors to Brisbane had grown to just under 100,000 in 2016.
China Airlines also flies from Taiwan to Sydney and onwards to Auckland. However, the Airline Route website reported the airline planned to drop its Sydney-Auckland tag flights from July 17 2017.
Qantas codeshares on China Airlines Brisbane-Taipei and Sydney-Taipei services.
Oskar
says:Routes online stated they are dropping SYD-AKL flights from 13 JUL 17 not 17 June!
australianaviation.com.au
says:Thanks Oskar, the story has been updated. Apologies for the error.
Radar
says:If Qantas decided to fly to Taiwan, in the future. would it be able to do so with its own badged aircraft?
Or would our national flag carrier need to use some vague subsidiary like ‘Australia Asia Airlines’ as happened in the past so not to offend our friends on the China mainland?
Mike
says:@Radar, from memory (and I’m happy to be corrected) Qantas was majority Australian government owned at the time it was operating to Taipei so “Australia Asia” airlines was painted on a B767-338 and the pair of B747-38SPs to operate the services so as to not offend mainland China.
Similarly British Airways, Swisair and Japan airlines created livery versions with the word “Asia” added. These aircraft would always be scheduled to operate ssevices to Taiwan though would be rotated through the airline’s network on other days of the week.
With privatisation and the direct government links removed the Asian liveries were no longer required.
KLM however still has “KLM Asia” branded aircraft as I guess the Dutch government still maintains majority ownership of the carrier.
Interested to hear if anyone has any updates.
Mike
says:Oops, missed my typo! Correction…..Swissair! Since the demise of that carrier, Swiss airlines now operates services for Switzerland.