Intro: Getting there
This is a brief report just to show you guys what it is like to fly domestic route in Taiwan.
I am traveling from Kaohsiung in south of Taiwan to Hualien on the east side of Taiwan. The choices of transportation are either taking train southbound (4-5hours) or taking the daily flight of Mandarin Airlines on this relatively new ATR72.
Kaohsiung intl airport
Being the airport that serves Southern Taiwan, Kaohsiung Intl is a hub for national carrier China Airlines and Cathay Pacific group. CI operates mainly to Japanese cities and Southeast Asia and CX/KA usually carries transit passengers through HongKong.
Photo taken from the viewing deck. This gorgeous A333 bound for HongKong. Cathay group operates multiple flights daily using A320/A330.
Domestic boarding lounge with this out of date dragon pillar…
Our aircraft for today. An ERJ is spotted at the back and will be making a quick hop to offshore islands. Mandarin Airlines is the subsidiary airlines of CI. And operates domestic flight and international flights out of Taichung Airport.
Ready to board
enroute
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Layout and design of the seating. With dark grey as its main visual, a splash of orange and yellow is used to bring out the company color. Leather seats are clean and comfortable.
quite adequate seat width and length
The cute ATR72-600 safety card
Taking off from Kaohsiung. Winter in Taiwan is usually cloudy and suffered greatly from air pollution coming all the way from China (similar to HongKong or Seoul, who also suffered greatly by foreign pollution…)
It was a fully booked flight with 2 cabin crew providing drink services.
Can't complain for a 40 minutes flight~
The window is seriously dirty. Hualien airport only receives around 5-6 flights per day, mainly domestic. Chartered flights are common during peak seasons but it has no scheduled international flight after HK Express halted their service. Recently Eastar started scheduled charter from Seoul Incheon. Let's hope this route is gonna work out.
Luggage belt.
Thanks for sharing, it's nice to see a Mandarin Airlines report as there haven't been any recent reports! Looks like a good product for a 40 min flight and the cabin/plane look like and new.