Review of Singapore Airlines flight from Taipei to Singapore in Economy

My preceding flight to TPE was continued with a side trip to South-East Asia:
CDG-TPE : BR88 (B777-300ER) there
TPE-SIN : SQ877 (A330-300) you are here
SIN- BKK : SQ982 (B777-200ER) there
BKK-TPE : BR76 (B777-300ER) to be posted later
TPE-CDG : BR87 (B777-300ER)
A word of warning : this FR is LONG, really VERY LONG, with an unreasonable number of pictures of planes in both the flight report and the bonus. If you are not interested by planes, better close this window right away (probably because you did not expect to click into a aviation geek website in the first place).
Now that you have been warned, possibly with a supply of non-Taiwanese coffee to help you reach the end, let’s begin the story.
This is an SQ flight, but it was part of a TPE-BKK round trip on Eva Air, with the way in flown on SQ on a BR ticket quota with a 24h stopover in SIN. This was cheaper than an ordinary triangular trip, but a side effect was that both websites of BR and SQ refused pre-OLCI seat selection: BR because I was going to fly in an SQ aircraft, and SQ because I had a BR ticket.

There were some leftover seats in the front of the cabin when I checked in on line, but they were overwing. Going through immigration is always fast in SIN: the advantage of being among the first passengers to deplane would be limited and I could just as well choose a seat in the rear of the aircraft, furthest away from the hot air from the reactors which are a nuisance for taking pictures, and with less hindrance caused by the wing. Also, if the flight turned out to not be full, there was more chance to have an empty seat next to me. I chose therefore Seat 61A rather than Seat 46K (a window seat, but overwing and on the wrong side due to the sun’s direction).

This flight was a good opportunity to fly SQ while I could, because I discovered on the OLCI that there is an age limit: the drop-down menu does not allow a year of birth before 1918.

I had checked before the OLCI opened what meals would be offered on board. The least that I can writ is that the description was terse.

On D Day, I arrived at the end station of the subway’s airport line, which is actually closer to Beimen station than to Taipei Central station. I had noted when I had arrived in Taipei that there were in-town check-in facilities, like in Hong-Kong.

What the signs do not indicate is that the in-town check-in is offered to the passengers of Eva Air (and its subsidiary Uni-Air) flights only. A BR ticket on an SQ flight is a no-go. It’s a far cry from the offering of HK’s Airport Express where some thirty airlines provide in-town check-in services.
So much for the in-town check-in test : that would be for another time.

This was not a problem for me, because I was leaving immediately to the airport, using a means of transportation which is 100% accessible to handicapped passengers and passengers with a large suitcase alike. The main issue was obtaining a ticket for that line. You can use your Easycard (Taiwan’s multipurpose stored value card), but the credit on mine was not enough and I had planned to recharge it like in any subway station. But this was not “any subway station” and I did not find an Easycard reload machine anywhere.

No problem, I’ll buy a one way ticket. Yes, but the machine does not give more than 99 TWD of change, and consequently accepts only coins and 100 TWD banknotes. You cannot buy a 160 TWD ticket with such a high denomination bill (500 TWD are worth about 15 EUR), and bad luck, I’m out of 100 TWD bills. (In any subway station, you can reload your Easycard with 500 or 1000 TWD bills…)

The solution was the manual counter, where not only you cannot pay with a credit card (after one year in Stockholm where I never ever used cash, even for the most insignificant purchase, it felt strange), but I had to wait until the single staff had finished handling of a passenger on the other side. Four minutes waiting time is not a disaster, but it seems much longer in front of an empty counter than in a waiting line which is making progress. I did not have the impression of a VIP service, despite the claims of the cash tray.

All that for obtaining this contactless infinitely reusable token, typical of both Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese subway systems. (I am always puzzled that subways are still using single use paper tickets in France and in Japan alike. They are so 20st century…)

Fare evasion is negligible in Taipei’s urban transport : the turnstiles are consequently of the rather symbolic kind.

Back view of the in-town check-in counters where the staff is far from being overworked, due to the lack of passengers which can use their services.

The subway was reasonably full, unlike on the way in which was before typical working hours, but I has no difficulty asking a passenger to please remove his hand luggage from the seat next to him. I was lucky: the express trains run every 15 minutes and this one departed two minutes after I had reached the platform.

When I was living in Taipei, there were advertising campaigns reminding that taking pictures under the skirts of women was forbidden. Did Taiwanese men go one step further in sexual harassment in public transports?

This does not mean that relationships between men and women is discouraged : I saw this ad in a corridor to the in-town check-in counters :
Looking at beauty on the internet rather than the real beauty is completely stupid!!

I did not look at the questionable beauty of my male neighbor in the subway, but to the landscape : the Shin Kong Tower (the second tallest building in Taipei) looks taller in this skyline than the actually considerably taller Taipei 101 tower which is much further away.

A former branch of the Danshui River has been transformed into parks, and also a floodplain.

The urban area of Taipei has been separated administratively speaking between Taipei (the center of the city) and New Taipei City which also includes vast areas of undeveloped mountains

Taipei is disfigured by many overhead expressways and interchanges

Mount Guanyin in the background, on the left bank of the Danshui River. The summit provides a sweeping view on the river from Taipei to the sea about 20 km downstream

Taipei used to be regularly devastated by catastrophic floods in case of storms or typhoons in its vast watershed. The city is now protected by hundreds of kilometers of dykes which can be crossed at regular intervals through openings which can be closed by heavy flood-resistant gates. This is one of these dykes, with an expressway on top of it, seen from the river’s side.

And the same on the city side

The industrial areas crossed by this new subway line are not very exciting.

You can’t see it well, but the line climbs steeply from the city center through a small mountain.

The bus or taxi ride to the airport used to take this expressway which is empty in the middle of the day, but not during the commuting rush hours.

Arrival in TPE

The drawback of these inclined travelators is that four-wheeled suitcases have a strong tendency for rolling away.

No excessive waiting time expected, especially since I checked in on line

SQ set a 7 kg limit to hand luggage : this is a hard low lost ceiling, only that it is never enforced. I nevertheless have no need to bother taking much on board: SQ also allows 30 kg of checked luggage in Economy: this is a different story from any LCC, or any European legacy airline.

I’ll stay only 24 hours in Singapore, and I actually have a round trip TPE-BKK ticket, with a stopover in SIN on the way in, so I needed to ensure that my luggage would stop in SIN.

There was some waiting in SIN and at the immigration, but I was airside in a quarter of an hour.

I chose to not adhere to the chronological order in the airside chapter, and also to not keep duplicate pictures of aircraft of the same type and livery. Let’s have a look at the facilities first: the two linear terminals are separated landside, but communicate airside, creating a continuous rectangle.
Eva Air is not alone in the co-branding game with Sanryo, the Japanese owner of the “cute” Hellow Kitty character: so does TPE, and the nursing room airside is inescapably decorated in this super-kitsch and 可愛 ( kěài in Mandarin, kawaii in Japanese) style.

If you are a fan of Hello Kitty, i.e. either a Western girl below 6 or a Taiwanese or Japanese woman below 40, you should not miss Gate C3, the one from which the flights on Eva Air’s Hello Kitty jets usually depart.

There is of course the corresponding airport shop

The Chinese New Year was approaching (it is very late in 2018, because there was an additional lunar month in 2017 to resynchronize the calendar), so the ceiling with decorations with the character 春 (« spring », because Chinese New Year is called 春節 = Spring Festival, i.e. the moment when the days start lengthening again , and not spring in the Western acceptance of the word)

And the character 福 (happiness)

This decoration is entirely made of different calligraphies of the same character 福

Not everybody is interested in planes in an airport, and MSI, a Taiwanese maker of graphic boards and similar processing hardware has installed racing car simulators to promote its wares.

If you are more interested in Aboriginal cultures (and all their trinkets and take away foods), this shop is for you. You have recognized a Tao canoe from Orchid Island in the foreground, and if you did not, I suggest you read (again) ce FR.

Talking about orchids, the decoration in this booth is regularly renewed

Come listen to contemporary Taiwanese music at Gate C1

A sign of present times and of the current Indonesian immigration, this microbus transformed into a sales booth guarantees to its customers that all the products there are halal.

On the other hand, these prayer and meditation rooms have not changed since the beginning of the Flight Report era.

The production of electronics has been vastly delocalized from Taiwan to Mainland China, despite what the decoration of Gate B7 implies.

This staff, center, calls in Mandarin the last passengers for Dōngjīng 東京, ans also in Japanese and English, two languages in which the name of this city is pronounced Tōkyō.

I do not like this style, but it is Taiwanese.

The corridor between the two terminals includes this escalator on the way in

And this iconic diminutive other one on the way back.

It passes also through two corridors decorated with these calligraphies

And along this « Airport Experience Zone »

… that I call a deserted windowless and dark bar.

An information booth at the intersection between the corridor of Terminal 2 and one of the corridors connecting it with Terminal 1

I don’t know about you, but these are not the pictograms that I would have selected for th Online Preorder Service Counter. Do they mean that you have time time to have lunch before you retrieve your wares, and that you should pray that they did not get lost ?

This boarding gate is dedicated to gastronomy: you can seat on mouth watering cushions shaped like thick cream.

This other boarding room is dedicated to the Hakka culture, with wicker baskets of kakis drying upside down under the ceiling. The Hakka originate from Fujian, the Mainland province facing Taiwan, and are therefore numerous in Taiwan. The Hakka language is the third most used Chinese language in Taiwan, after Mandarin and Taiwanese).

My flight departed from Gate D7, whose them is that of the Pili puppets which revisit this ancient art with heroic fantasy style clothes and hairdos.

But before that, I had done some, and even a lot of plane spotting, because TPE is a rather plane-spotter friendly airport if you know where to find the non tinted glass windows (Hint : look for emergency escapes).
Let’s begin with Eva Air with an A321

A330

Let’s continue with her rival China Airlines : 737

A330 in standard livery

A330 in Skyteam livery

Arrival at her gate of a 747 in Skyteam livery

747 freighter parked in the distance

Tiger Air has created a Taiwanese subsidiary ; this is one of its A320

These aircraft are Taiwanese, but for how long ? In front of an Orient Thai 747, a Transasia Airways A330 is stored since this airline folded after suffering two fatal crashes of ATR72s

The A321s of its low-cost subsidiary V Air are also grounded there. They did not fly very long in this livery.

Now the foreign airlines : KE flies an A380 to TPE.

All the major Chinese airlines are there: Air China A321

China Southern A330

China Eastern 737 in special livery

737-300 transformed in a freighter version for EMS

One country, two systems, but this Cathay Pacific A330 is also Chinese

Like this Hong-Kong Airlines A350, which furthermore belongs to the Hainan Airlines group

Over one million Japanese tourists per year visiting Taiwan and even more in the revers direction, there were of course Japanese airlines.
Japan Airlines 737

Vanilla Air A320, with deployed thrst reversers.

Arrival of the most important aircraft for me that day : the SQ A330-300 which was going to operate my flight

There she is at the gate

The same from further down, because in TPE you pre-board to a room at the lower level

There it is

There were only a few power ports, but even less demand for them, so that I could recharge my laptop and look at the traffic through the windows top left.

A becoming FA who may have reached retirement age since this picture was taken indicates the direction of the Economy cabin.

Earphones are to be taken just before boarding

As well as a selection of newspapers on the upper tray

And on the lower tray too. You probably recognized on the first page of the newspaper in the center the picture of Tsai Ying-wen 菜英文, the president of Taiwan. She lives up to the promises of her first name which means “intelligent and well-read”.

The plane door with both a male and a female FA welcoming passengers.

Boarding of the Economy passengers was per zone, starting from the rear of the aircraft, and I was among the first in my zone. These are the last two seats on the rear left of the aircraft.

And a view of the rear of the cabin which had not filled up yet

The rear of the seat, below the IFE screen

I like planes which provide at seat power, here at the tip of the armrests between two seats.

The seat pitch is decent for a medium range flight in Economy

The width between armrests is OK too

The tray table deploys in two parts

The carpeting was clean – I liked the design.

Nothing special overhead

Safety cards tend to become wordless in many airlines (like those of AF), but this one is especially verbose.

I did not check in detail the in-flight magazine : that would be for the next report

End of push-back for this Japan Airlines 737

… which taxies away, saluted by these four strictly aligned ground staff.

An oshibori was distributed shortly after take-off

A menu whose cover page is made of a resistant material

This was the occidental menu

My frequent readers won’t be surprised that I chose the oriental menu

The offering of drinks

Pushback and then came a good surprise : my neighbor self-upgraded himself to an empty set of three central seats, and that upgraded my seat to a double seat.

The space for my legs was no longer used by my laptop daypack

… and the width between armrests shot up to sofa size

This was my private office space during this flight

Plane spotting resumed from the end of push-back : China AIrlines A330

Followed by a China Eastern A330

Miscellaneous stabilizers together with the winglet of our plane

The China Eastern A330 has reached her gate

There was a long line of aircraft heading towards the runway behind us (and half a dozen more in front of us too).

Skyteam vertical stabilizers at Gates D

Alignment of Eva Air aircraft at Gates C

With one in special livery

The planes ahead of us for departure : Vanilla Air A320

China Airlines A330

China Airlines 747

Tiger Air Taiwan A320 (I missed another one before the Vanilla Air A320)

The maintenance facilities of Evergreen (the owners of Eva Air)

Southern Air (DHL group) 777

Eva Air 777 in Hello Kitty livery

An unexpected Ukraine International777

The line lengthened behind us, with China Airlines planes

Take-off run, passing along the line behind us : China Airlines A330

Tiger Air Taiwan A320

China Airlines 747 freighter

Take-off : this is TPE from the sky

The end of the terminal, with this semi-circular boarding room which is not plane spotter friendly because of the presence of a deplaning corridor.

The other runway with in the center the parking area for planes of failed airlines waiting for potential buyers.

Zoom and image enhancement of an Orient Thai Airlines 747, two Transasia Airlines A330 and a V Air A321.

The business areas beyond the limits of TPE

Expressway 61 and the tiny Zhuwei harbor

The cloud cover quickly eliminated any hope for landscapes

A glass of fruit juice (apple for me) and a pack of 15 grams of dried nuts were distributed after take-off.

How could it not be suitable for vegetarians?

Cheers !

The wing through the glass

The meal was served like this

After unwrapping

Zoom on the hot meal that I found good and spic the way I like it.

Note the presence of metalware with SQ logos which are welcome in a world where plasticware rules in Economy.

Bon appétit !

It was well after I had finished this meal that a 100 gram of Häagen Dazs ice cream was distributed, evidently to serve it as cold as possible.

Everybody knows that this vaguely Scandinavian name has been made up by an American ice cream maker, but who knows that most of its world wide production is churned from a factory located in
Tilloy les Mofflaines, a tiny 1,500 inhabitant village in northern France.
(It is written in Chinese that the list of contents applies to Taiwan.)

Note that this ice cream coud have been sold in Hong-Kong too, because the information below is for the Hong-Kong market. It beats me why the Taiwanese focus on the ingredients and the Hongkongese on the quantity of calories, lipids, etc.

The Chinese are expected to receive 2000 kcal per day in Nutrient Reference Value.

The workers in Tilloy les Mofflaines had been kind enough to provide a small plastic spoon (not very good for the environment), and I found it more convenient to use SQ’s metal spoon, which has the added advantage of being 100% reusable and 100% eventually recyclable.

I finished my meal with a coffee. Quite frankly, a French ice cream with a Taiwanese coffee is not the combination that I would have recommended, because my readers know the poor esteem in which I hold Taiwanese coffee. The best proof is that although you can find ice cream made in Tilloy les Mofflaines in Taiwan, you will have a hard time finding Taiwanese coffee in Tilloy les Mofflaines. Customers know better than airlines.

SQ’s moving map is like that of BR a non interactive program, but unlike that of BR, the sequence of successive zooms is much more to my liking, and there are no spurious tourist pictures hiding the plane’s position.

When you self-upgraded to a central triple seat, you get a lie-flat seat. It is somewhat too short, but it is nevertheless lie-flat.

And on the other hand, the exile of my neighbor to the nearest bed gave me total freedom to move around, in particular to this galley which was empty because the FAs were collecting the meal trays.

I don’t drink wine, but I was warned by specialist to never try these three bottles of wine

There is not much space on both sides of the trolley in the aisle

The rear of the cabin, with the misalignment of the seats due to the narrowing of the fuselage

For door addicts

And for jumpseat addicts

SQ considers that changing a baby’s diapers is a strictly female business

And believes it is safer to remind Singaporean mothers that throwing the said diapers in the loo is a bad idea.

The toiletry supplies, removed from their enclosure

Mouth wash

I did not have any opportunity for an air to air picture on route, but this is an air to sea one

A glass of orange juice (or apple juice, or water) before the beginning of the descent

Tanjung Sedili, on the east cost of the Malay peninsula

Did the captain just realize that he forgot his duty-free bag in TPE ?

No, he simply was assigned one penalty lap, before touring south in Indonesia (I had forgotten to set my phone in flight mode and it welcomed me in that country). This is a Flightradar24 screenshot.

Two dubious attempts at air-to-air picture

Too little light and too much haze, unfortunately

The maze of Indonesian islands south of Singapore

The first three bridges on the Trans Barelang (=Batam – Rempang – Galang Islands ) Road, from Batam Island (bottom)

The long island is Melintang, with Batam in the foreground

Small and densely inhabited Buluh Island

Tanjungkubu Island

It was getting late and the atmosphere was very hazy : it was very frustrating to barely see the center of Singapore which was in full view during the final descent.

This is what image processing revealed of the iconic Marina Bay hotel and casino

The park in Tampines, in the alignment of Runway 02L/20R.

Construction work near the airport

Imminent landing Runway 02L

Rather soft landing, without using the thrust reversers

I was relieved to see this confirmation that we had landed in Changi

We did not need them

Some plan spotting while taxiing to the terminal : Philippines Airlines

Emirates A380

Qantas A330

The same in OneWorld livery

Air France 777-300ER in Skyteam livery

China Airlines A330 also in Skyteam livery

And completing the list of the three major alliances, Singapore Airlines 777 in Star Alliance livery

Jet Airways 737

Two LCC : Lion Air 737-900ER

Silk Air737

We taxi next to a Singapore Airlines A380

I had the impression that our A330’s winglet was dangerously close to that of the A380 at the next gate

… but it was a misleading perspective : the were several meters away from each other.

I was genuinely relieved to leave the aircraft for one reason : the tiring shopping mall music which was blasted on the PA system from the beginning of the descent. Not only I hated it, but the sound level was way beyond what other sadistic airlines like AF or BR pour on their passengers. I can’t understand why an airline which strives to keep no other ranking than #1 among world airlines ensure that the last impression of a departing passenger is an awful one. I took a couple minutes to tell the FA before the plane door how unpleasant this was.

We are now airside where there is no separation between incoming and departing passengers, since the security check of departing passengers is done at the entrance of the boarding room.

Going down towards the immigration counters, where enough are open to make each waiting line a short one.

Too bad that SQ did not distribute immigration forms on board as usual elsewhere: it would have saved a couple minutes to all passengers.

Not enough SQ girls in this report ? Wait until the report of the next flight (teaser…), but here is one to kep you waiting.

Arrival in the luggage delivery room 24 minutes after the plane had reached her final parking spot, and I waited only a few minutes for my luggage before withdrawing some cash from an ATM and taking a taxi.

Thanks for reading me!
I had promised you lots of plane pictures, and if you are not bored yet, you can see more by clicking on the Taiwanese bonus below.

Contenu masqué : Cliquez pour afficher

A visit in Taipei could not be complete without spending afew hours Lane 180Binjiang Street.

Its access from the wide Minzu Street is marked by two temples which are worth a look.

Their decoration is typical of the Chinese Fujian province, on the opposite shore of the Taiwan Straits, but it’s in Taiwan that one can see most of these superb jiǎnnián 剪黏, i.e. 3D mosaics of shards of bright colored ceramics bowls.

These temples are not the main purpose of visiting this lane; the more interesting place is just beyond the bend in the background.

There you have a perfect view of Runway 09 of TSA, Taipei’s mostly domestic airport. I have never seen anybody forbid picture or note taking here, despite the ominous yet obsolete sign, center. (To the best of my knowledge, Runway 27 is never used)

Some visitors have a semi-professional camera equipment (note the Boeing 747 sticker on the zoom’s end!), but I noted quite a number of girls who had come in groups of two or three.

Since my purpose is not to show every single aircraft seen that day, I made a selection of my best pictures for each type and livery, not always of a single aircraft, and not in chronological order.
Far Eastern Air Transport was in 2011 the ugly duckling in the Taiwanese skies, painfully emerging from three years in bankruptcy, with aging MD82s and an old history of crashes. Few observers gave it much chance of long term survival in front of the ambitions of Transasia Airways which was extending its network in South-East Asia with brand new A330s.

Six years later, two fatal crashes brought Transasia Airways under, but FAT’s MD82s which are now all in their early twenties are still landing in TSA.

Front view

We are not that much further from the runway’s threshold than at Malo Beach. Wow, a MD82 generates commendable noise and wind at take-off !

The special livery of this MD82 may not ring a bell for you if you do not know much about Taiwan.

This stone structure on the coast of small Qimei Island, in the Penghu archipelago, has been built by
Yen Chong and Yen Yuji, two brothers whose names have been remembered. It is submerged at high tide and traps fish when the water recedes. It is one of the best preserved such structure in the world. It is no longer used for catching fish, but nowadays attracts Taiwanese tourists and lovers.

The format of Mandarin Airlines, a subsidiary of China Airlines, has changed a lot in a few decades because there has been times when it held the long haul aircraft of CI in order to avoid the reprisals of Mainland China against any country welcoming aircraft bearing the Taiwanese flag. On the other hand, Mandarin Airlines had only E-190s like this one in their fleet in 2012

This is another one approaching

The E-190 was well adapted to regional routes, but used too much fuel on short domestic flights, and so Mandarin Airlines received in December – January three new ATR72, after having considered buying the ATR72 of defunct Transasia Airways. This one was the first one I was seeing :

She pitched significantly during landing

There was obviously a significant crosswind at the time of touchdown

… the plane straightened up immediately afterwards.

The change has been paradoxical : in 2011, the majority of the Taiwanese twinprops were Dash 8-300; only Transasia Airways had ATR72. Since that time, this airline has gone bankrupt, but the ATR72 has taken a hegemonic market share in the Taiwanese skies (tiny Daily Air, which flies in the south of Taiwan only, is currently shifting from Dornier 228 to Twin Otter).
Five years ago, Uni-Air (Eva Air’s domestic subsidiary airline) had just received their first ATR72-600, like this departing one in standard livery.

This is another seen landing, while walking from the spotting point to the terminal.

Another one in a special livery, landing

And leaving later

Another ATR72 in a special livery

B-17017 is recorded in Airfleets as belonging to Uni-Air, but she has Eva Air markings.

Now, let’s continue with larger modules with a China Airlines 737

Touchdown

Eva Air A321

Sorry for cutting part of the tail

Let’s have a look now to the foreign airlines which are few in TSA, with this Shanghai Airlines 737 coming from PVG.

The touch down burnt quite a lot of rubber

Another 737 : Eastar Jet (a Korean LCC)

Even bigger with this Japan Airlines 787

Flare

Touchdown

There she leaves

Alignment

ANA also flies to TSA with a 787 : I read it in HUGE font on the fuselage on this one,

… but not on that one

It was not over, because it only takes half an hour on foot to reach TSA whose observation platform is worth visiting.

Arrival on the terrace of Terminal 2 (dedicated to domestic flights), decorated with this wall painting.

The terrace is entirely separated from the tarmac by tall window frames which were very clean. There was enough room for all, even on a week-end with a nice weather, because it covers both smallish jetties and the space between them. A tactile FIDS on the right provides details on each airline and aircraft – that it was tactile was an inconvenient, because young children kept touching it and I could never see the ETA and ATD of the next flights.

The sun sets on these two ATR72

And on these two others, stored in TSA while waiting for another owner. They belonged to Transasia Airways which went bankrupt after the fatal crash of two of their ATR72s in six months. (Note by the way that the owners reimbursed all the pending tickets before folding the airline).

On the other hand, this bakery on the terrace of TSA belonging to the catering branch of Transasia Airways is still in business.

The livery does not disclose it, but this A319CJ belongs to Eva Air. There she is in bright daylight.

And the same at sunset

Two other business jets : a Gulfstream G550 belonging to the Foxconn Technology Group. Foxconn is the Taiwanese giant of electronics and IT hardware production for a host of world famous brands. This production is now delocalized in Mainland China, in particular in a giant factory in Shenzhen which made the headlines in the early 2010s after a series of suicides of local staff.

And a Bombardier Global 5000 : her owner (Executive Aviation Taiwan Corp) must have paid a hefty price for registering her B-98888, an especially lucky number in the Chinese culture.

Of course, we see on the tarmac more or less the same planes which were landing or taking off, except that there is next to no view on the aircraft at the jetbridges for international flights.
Mandarin Airlines ATR72

And Uni-Air ATR72 at push-back

Eva Air A321 parked remotely

One of the ANA 787s seen landing is now pushing back

… and leaves

Detail of the sawtooth pattern of the reactor’s rear cowling

There she flies at sunset towards the Land of the Rising Sun

Arrival of a Mandarin Airlines E-190

Thrust inverters deployed

End of braking

There she taxies towards Terminal 2

Arrival alongside the jetbridge

The front landing gear is precisely on the mark

Arrival of a China Airlines A330, off the back gournd of Taipei’s Grand Hotel

Touchdown and deployment of the thrust reversers

There she taxies towards her parking location

My pictures of this 738 bearing the Taiwanese flag are not very sharp, but this aircraft is special.

She belongs to the Taiwanese Air Force. I won’t claim 是總統的飛機 ! (This is the President’s aircraft!), like somebody behind me did, but she is certainly used for governmental VIPs.

This AS365 is also a government aircraft ; she belongs to the National Airborne Service Corps, a part of the Ministry of the Interior devoted mostly to search and rescue tasks, and also to coast guard duties.

Also a governmental aircraft, of the military kind : a Taiwan Air Force C-130 is a common sight in TSA.

No, I did not doctor this picture of a Uni-Air ATR72 taking off from TSA

Nor that of this Far Eastern Air Transport MD82

It is time to leave TSA with this complete rainbow

Who among the readers of this bonus will post the next report on these aircraft ?