Taiwan Today

Legislators suggested Oct. 19 that the Pingtung Airport in Taiwan’s southernmost county be shut down, calling the facility’s extremely low usage a waste of public resources. The airport currently handles only three flights per week. Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Yeh Kuang-shih expressed support for the proposal put forward by the lawmakers at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Transportation Committee to review the 2010 budget for the ministry’s Civil Aeronautics Administration. Yeh said that if local residents do not express opposition, then Pingtung Airport and Hengchun Airport, also located in the county of Pingtung, could both be developed into pilot training and aviation schools or recreational areas to help boost tourism and increase their land value. Domestic air passenger numbers have plummetted since the launch of the island’s high-speed railway in 2007. According to MOTC tallies, passenger volume at airports islandwide continued to fall during the first seven months of this year, with Pingtung Airport experiencing the sharpest decline at nearly 80 percent. Speaking at the committee meeting, Legislator Kuo Wen-chen of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party called Pingtung Airport a “breeding ground for mosquitoes” as the airports continue to shoulder the personnel costs for maintaining and running the airport despite their low usage. In the government’s first admission that the island may have an excessive number of airports, Yeh said that his ministry already began a comprehensive review of the high-speed rail’s impact on the operations of airports around the nation. With a staff of 20 workers, including four CAA personnel, three contract employees, and 13 maintenance and emergency workers, Pingtung Airport is at the top of the list for review. Hengchun Airport, meanwhile, looks even more overstaffed, with an incredible ratio of nearly one staff member to one passenger per week. Uni Airways Corp. is the only airline that operates flights for the Taipei-Pingtung and Taipei-Hengchun routes. Losses on the Pingtung route totaled roughly NT$60 million (US$1.8 million) last year, while those for the Hengchun route amounted to approximately NT$20 million. High-speed rail tickets between Taipei City and the southern port city of Kaohsiung are priced at NT$1,490 one way, more than NT$500 less than the air fare for the Taipei-Pingtung route and over NT$800 cheaper than those for the Taipei-Hengchun route. MOTC officials stated bluntly that Pingtung Airport was established in 2005 for “political reasons.” With the economic slump over the last few years and the loss of business to the high-speed rail, the airport has faced enormous difficulties in its operations, they said. The officials claimed that profitable cross-Taiwan Strait flights have in effect subsidized the money-losing domestic routes. “This is one of the reasons why, as many people have complained, ticket prices on the cross-strait routes have not come down,” they said. (SB)