Xinhua reports on the announcement of prices by China Eastern:China Eastern Airlines announced on Friday flight fares for weekend charter flights from Shanghai to Taipei and immediately started selling tickets.
The carrier is charging 3,700 yuan (US$ 528.6) for a round trip of economy-class flight, while business class costs 5,500 yuan, both including taxes.
Group tickets, for at least 10 passengers, costs 2,600 yuan each, the company said in a statement.
Between July 4 and 31, a passenger aircraft will leave Nanjing city in east China at 9 a.m. every Friday and arrive at Taipei at noon. The returning flight will start at 1 p.m. and arrive and Nanjing at 4 p.m. the same day.
According to the report, there will be 36 flights each weekend, Friday to Monday. Previous negotiations give 18 to China and 18 to Taiwan, as I recall. Airlines involved on the China side include Air China, China Southern Airlines, Hainan Airlines and Xiamen Airlines.
[Taiwan]
7 comments:
Wow, that seems expensive? I've never booked a trip to China from Taiwan, but I did make one round trip to HK once from Taiwan and that was around $250-300 I believe. Is the extra leg from HK to inside China really another $250 or so?
Also, any news on if both Eva and China Airlines are both doing direct flights also? I overheard my aunts talking about how Eva may be in trouble? Which is weird considering I always found Eva's flights completely full every time I've made the US-Taiwan trip.
Luckily I have no desire to go to China and I may be black listed for all I know, but it seems priced away from regular people anyway. It appears the travel agencies have bought up all the tickets and are now able to jack the price up.
Unfortunately, EVA air will never again receive money from me or my family after the dishonest, manipulative and adversarial encounter I had with their customer service team. I implore you all to avoid them as well. Find a nice foreign carrier instead.
That's really steep. I paid less than that going to Shanghai via Macau.
The price caught me by surprise as well. It does seem rather high, and not justified by even the oil costs involved.
The only thing this makes sense in my mind... keep in mind who's expected to make up the bulk of the traffic: mainland Chinese tourists. The demand from this group should be rather inelastic, even in the face of higher costs.
These flights will be full for the indefinite future, regardless whether the airlines charged 2000 RMB, 2700, or 3700 RMB.
As far as anonymous, take a deep breath here: very unlikely you're important enough to be "black listed".
Oh... I did organize a couple big anti-Chinese protests in my time, and served as the official voice of a couple groups opposed to China's military and political ambitions. You never know.
Wanted to point out the DPP is now looking for small donations. If finance reform is something they are looking to push, it could be very interesting times.
There is a limited number of direct flights between China and Taiwan right now. I'm sure the price will come down as the amount of flights per week increases.
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