U-Land Airlines
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U-Land Airlines () was a
Taiwanese Taiwanese may refer to: * Taiwanese language, another name for Taiwanese Hokkien * Something from or related to Taiwan ( Formosa) * Taiwanese aborigines, the indigenous people of Taiwan * Han Taiwanese, the Han people of Taiwan * Taiwanese people, ...
low-cost carrier A low-cost carrier or low-cost airline (occasionally referred to as '' no-frills'', ''budget'' or '' discount carrier'' or ''airline'', and abbreviated as ''LCC'') is an airline that is operated with an especially high emphasis on minimizing op ...
based in
Taipei Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the n ...
. The airline was the first low-cost carrier in Taiwan, which operated domestic and short-haul international routes. Having gone bankrupt in 2001, it was affiliated to U-Land Building Co., Ltd before it ceased operations, and is known to be the first Taiwanese airline company to have gone bankrupt.


History

U-Land Airlines was previously known as China-Asia Airlines, established on May 19, 1989, with capital registered of NT $200 million and 120 employees, authorized to fly the regular route from
Taipei Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the n ...
Kaohsiung Kaohsiung City (Mandarin Chinese: ; Wade–Giles: ''Kao¹-hsiung²;'' Pinyin: ''Gāoxióng'') is a special municipality located in southern Taiwan. It ranges from the coastal urban center to the rural Yushan Range with an area of . Kaohsi ...
, as well as Taipei–
Kinmen Kinmen, alternatively known as Quemoy, is a group of islands governed as a county by the Republic of China (Taiwan), off the southeastern coast of mainland China. It lies roughly east of the city of Xiamen in Fujian, from which it is separate ...
. China-Asia Airlines was affiliated to Chinese Kuomintang legislators from the company owned by the family of Wu De-mei, An Feng Industrial. The company only had a 36-seater
Short 360 The Short 360 (also SD3-60; also Shorts 360)Mondey, David. ''Encyclopedia of the World's Commercial and Private Aircraft''. New York: Crescent Books, 1981. , p. 228. is a commuter aircraft that was built by UK manufacturer Short Brothers during ...
propeller aircraft when it was established and was mainly responsible for non-scheduled charter operations. In the early 1990s, the company introduced a project named "U-Land World" and several other large construction cases in the middle area of Taiwan and was well known for a time. The funders–Zhou Qi-Rui and Zhou Qi-Chang–decided to expand to different industries and planned to buy China-Asia Airlines which at the time had nearly ceased any operations. In November 1994, China-Asia Airlines was bought and renamed as U-Land Airlines. It also became a member of the U-Land Corporation and purchased six
McDonnell Douglas McDonnell Douglas was a major American aerospace manufacturing corporation and defense contractor, formed by the merger of McDonnell Aircraft and the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1967. Between then and its own merger with Boeing in 1997, it produ ...
aircraft.


Financial troubles

In 1997, the
Asian financial crisis The Asian financial crisis was a period of financial crisis that gripped much of East Asia and Southeast Asia beginning in July 1997 and raised fears of a worldwide economic meltdown due to financial contagion. However, the recovery in 1998–1 ...
began, and Taiwan's
real estate Real estate is property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this (also) an item of real property, (more general ...
market declined. The issue of an excess of empty newly built properties had hit the U-Land Building corporation hardly, and their losses reached nearly NT $2.5 billion, associated with U-Land Airlines. In December 1998, they leased B-88898, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82, to Air Philippines (now
PAL Express Air Philippines Corporation, operating as PAL Express and formerly branded as Air Philippines and Airphil Express, is a wholly owned subsidiary airline of Philippine Airlines which is under its ownership. It is PAL's regional brand, with servic ...
) to carry out the Taiwan route. In March 2000, U-Land Airlines leased the same plane to Pacific Airlines (now Jetstar Pacific) to carry out Taiwan routes.


Grounding

Due to its weak financial status and flight safety record, U-Land Airlines had been ordered to cease operating twice by the Civil Aeronautics Administration of Taiwan. , U-Land Airlines had accumulated a total of NT $18,396,377, including nine cash grants of NT $11,106,486 and 2000. The CAA informed the relevant airlines according to Article 14 of the "charges for the use of aeronautical stations, aircraft, aids to navigation facilities and those related" and Article 9 of the "regulations on the use of buildings, land, and other equipment under the jurisdiction of
hem A hem in sewing is a garment finishing method, where the edge of a piece of cloth is folded and sewn to prevent unravelling of the fabric and to adjust the length of the piece in garments, such as at the end of the sleeve or the bottom of the ga ...
on July 1, 2000 to stop the airline from using
Taipei Songshan Airport Taipei Songshan Airport is a regional airport and military airbase located in Songshan District, Taipei, Taiwan. The airport covers an area of . The civilian section of Songshan Airport has scheduled flights to domestic destinations in Taiwa ...
and other related facilities, and talked to the lawyer Li Chao-Xiong for a follow-up to remind about debt matters. On November 13, 2001, the CAA revoked the "civil air transport industry permit" for U-Land Airlines. By August 2003, the Kaohsiung District Court auction by the
Farmers Bank of China A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer mig ...
and
Taiwan Business Bank Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast ...
filed to seize a pair of McDonnell Douglas MD-82 aircraft formerly operated by the airline. The reserve prices were NT $279,366,120 and NT $262,368,480, but no bidders were found. By the end of 2001, all the former U-Land Airlines employees decided to protest on the streets for their own rights to work, but the CAA denied them and still maintained the license's 'to remove' status. Within a decade, most of them had been re-employed in other airlines to work: the last wave of protests ended in late 2004. At that time, the U-Land Airlines name had officially been withdrawn from use by local media outlets.


Final fleet before grounding


References

{{Airlines of Taiwan Airlines disestablished in 2000 Airlines established in 1988 Defunct airlines of Taiwan Defunct low-cost airlines