Effective 18 July 2023, Prague Airport is getting a direct connection with the Taiwanese capital of Taipei. The direct route from Taoyuan International Airport to Václav Havel Airport Prague will be operated twice a week (with departures from Prague on Wednesdays and Sundays). China Airlines has decided to use Airbus A350-900s to service its flights between Taipei and Prague.
Jiří Pos, Chairman of the Prague Airport Board of Directors, considers the new long-haul route to Southeast Asia to be a great success: “We have been striving for a direct route to Taiwan for several years. I am therefore glad that our negotiations have yielded results and that we can offer this direct service to Czech travelers. Moreover, this route will provide passengers from Prague with the possibility of convenient transfers to a number of China Airlines destinations in Asia and the Pacific. The non-stop air connection with Prague is also great news for the residents of Taiwan. In 2019, i.e., before the Covid-19 pandemic, almost a quarter of a million of them visited the Czech Republic.”
Jan Herget, Director of CzechTourism, in connection with the new route, adds that last year there were approximately 7.4 million incoming tourists to the Czech Republic. “It is almost as many as ten years ago. However, we are still not at the pre-Covid numbers. Although almost all the guests from neighboring countries have already returned, the arrival of the more remote travelers can be expected this year, due to the air connection. Long-haul routes are thus the priority of Czech tourism for this year. If we were to count only tourists from Russia, China, South Korea, and Japan from the TOP 10 markets, who spent on an average nearly 3,800 crowns per person per night in our country in 2019, while domestic tourists spent around 700 crowns, last year there were almost two million guests from distant markets missing. We expect to see a change precisely due to an increased number of direct long-haul air connections. It’s great that, after the direct Prague-Seoul route that was resumed in March, i.e., the air connection with South Korea, we can look forward to direct flights to Taiwan this July.”
According to Herget, a total of 191,336 tourists from Taiwan came to the Czech Republic in 2019, compared to only 13,791 last year, which meant a drop of almost 93%. A direct flight between Prague and Taipei could change that.
Prague will become the sixth European city to which China Airlines operates direct flights from Taipei. It will rank alongside Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London, Rome, and Vienna. China Airlines will newly offer almost 30 direct flights between Europe and Taiwan each week.
Taiwan is not only a country of modern technology, but it also offers many tourist attractions. In the capital of Taipei, inhabited by three million people, there is the National Palace Museum, which houses rare collections from the Forbidden City. Next year, the impressive building located in the capital, which is the second tallest in the world and bears the number 101 in its name according to the number of floors, will celebrate its twentieth anniversary. The island abounds in wild tropical nature with gorges, mountains, lakes, and thermal springs. Almost a tenth of the area of Taiwan is covered by national parks.
Prague Airport currently features connections to Amman, Dubai, Doha, Muscat, and Salalah on the list of long-haul routes to Asia, with a direct route to Seoul scheduled to be resumed at the end of March.
