Tigerair Taiwan dropped plans to potentially launch flights between Kaohsiung and Hakodate during the 2024 winter schedule due to its inability to secure enough fuel at the Japanese airport, Hakodate City’s mayor Jun Oizumi said at a regular press conference at the end of the last month. The airline already operates five weekly flights between Taipei and Hakodate.
At the press conference, Oizumi mentioned that there have been reports about Japanese airports experiencing fuel shortages and that he “checked the status of fuel at Hakodate Airport and was told that enough fuel to allow for some new flights was secured.”
“However, when I visited Taiwan at the end of last month, I was told that Tigerair Taiwan was considering launching Hakodate – Kaohsiung route during the winter schedule but stopped doing so due to its inability to secure enough fuel,” he continued.
After explaining that both the airport’s operator, as well as the city made requests to the national government and other stakeholders to improve fuel supply and that he was seeing some progress, Oizumi closed the topic saying “Personally, I would like to ask Tigerair Taiwan to consider launching Hakodate – Kaohsiung route once again and to continue monitoring the actions of the national government and other stakeholders related to securing aviation fuel.”
Tigerair Taiwan is just one of multiple airlines that were reported to have canceled their plans to launch new routes or increase frequencies of their flights to Japan. In Hokkaido, Qantas was reported to have postponed considering relaunching Sydney – Sapporo flights due to the issue.
To deal with the shortage, Narita Airport imported fuel from overseas and Hokkaido Airports, which operates six other airports in addition to Hakodate, said it was considering offering landing fee discount to airlines that bring enough fuel with them to operate their return flights from Japan.
