China Airlines will begin a five-times-weekly service from Taipei to the Vietnamese coastal city of Da Nang on January 2, 2023.
The route will be operated by the airline’s new A321 neo aircraft, following the launch of services to Cebu in the Philippines and Chiang Mai in Thailand.
The A321 neo aircraft is configured with 180 seats (12 business class, 168 economy class), and recently debuted on the Taipei-Tokyo Haneda route.
The airline will operate the three hour Taipei-Da Nang flights on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
The airline says that the route will meet Taiwanese demand for travel to Vietnam and more flexibility in passengers’ itineraries. China Airlines also operates up to 30 flights between Taiwan and North America every week, enabling travellers to visit the two regions.
In the release, the carrier also mentioned that it had doubled the number of services on Southeast Asia routes in the last quarter.
From October onwards, the Kaohsiung-Manila route will be increased to three flights a week and services on the Taichung-Ho Chi Minh route will resume from November 18 with four direct flights a week.
Further ahead, Kaohsiung-Bangkok services will resume from January 2023, meaning that those in central and southern Taiwan will no longer have to travel to northern Taiwan.
The airline added that it is increasing its overall number of passenger-carrying flights by 50 per cent in Q4 “in anticipation of the borders re-opening”.