For the second time in its history, Far Eastern Air Transport (FAT) announced it was suspending flights, this time from Friday (December 13).
The sudden announcement Thursday (December 12) followed years of serious losses after a bankruptcy in 2008 and a resurrection three years later.
The public first got wind of the news Thursday morning when the carrier wrote online that its booking system would not operate due to “maintenance of the system,” the Central News Agency reported.
As FAT had not notified the authorities 60 days beforehand that it would lay off about 1,000 employees, the Taipei City Government said it would request a ban on airline chairman Chang Kang-wei (張綱維) leaving the country.
Travel agencies and media said they were unable to contact Chang Thursday afternoon, as he had apparently switched off his cellphone.
One of the most prominent victims of the sudden ending of FAT services was reportedly Kuomintang presidential candidate Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), who had booked a flight to the offshore island of Kinmen for a campaign event Friday.
FAT was founded in 1957 as Taiwan’s first private airline, mostly transporting mail to the outer islands of Kinmen and Penghu. In 1981, one of the company’s aircraft crashed in the mountains of Miaoli County, killing 110 people, while in 1997, a Taiwanese passenger hijacked a flight to China.
At the time of its suspension, FAT was also operating flights to China, Japan, South Korea’s island of Jeju, Vietnam and Cambodia.
Source：Taiwan News
