Tigerair Taiwan gives 10.8 months of wages as bonuses on average

Taipei, Jan. 15 (CAN) Budget carrier Tigerair Taiwan announced Monday that it has issued bonuses equivalent to 10.8 months of wages on average to its employees ahead of Lunar New Year, as the airline industry has seen a significant rebound in the post COVID-19 era.

Speaking with reporters, Tigerair Taiwan Chairman Chen Han-ming (陳漢銘) said a company board meeting earlier in the day approved a proposal to give four months of salaries and NT$20,000 (US$641) in standard bonuses, plus NT$50,000 to NT$80,000 in performance-based bonuses, to the airline's employees.

Along with the bonuses received by its 800 plus employees in August and December last year, the amounts given hit as high as 14 months of wages, with the average at 10.8 months, according to Chen.

In addition to the fat year-end bonuses, Chen said the company has also decided to raise employees' salaries by 4 percent on average for 2024. If it includes an additional increase of NT$3,000, the average wage hike will hit 11.48 percent.

In addition, Tigerair Taiwan will also raise food subsidies to its employees by 12 percent this year, Chen added.

Chen expressed gratitude to his employees for their contribution in helping the airline overcome the challenges it faced in recent years when the COVID-19 pandemic forced the industry to grind to a near halt.

Now, the situation has improved significantly with consolidated sales posted by Tigerair Taiwan hitting a new high of NT$12.57 billion in 2023, soaring 848.29 percent from a year earlier largely due to a strong performance in passenger flights.

As Japan is the favorite place for Taiwanese travelers to go to, Tigerair Taiwan's routes to Japan accounted for about 80 percent of its total revenue in 2023, Chen said.

In a sign of further growth, during the first quarter of this year, where the Lunar New Year holiday will fall, ticket booking beat that over the same period of last year, Chen said.

Based on the tickets reserved for the three-month period, the load factor -- an industry metric to measure how much of an airline's passenger carrying capacity is used -- would hit 95 percent on the routes to Japan, he said.

Even better, the load factor for the routes to Vietnam for the first quarter would hit 96-97 percent, while tickets for flights to Macau are fully booked, Chen said.

As demand for air travel remains strong, Chen said, airfares are expected to continue to grow this year.

Chen said Tigerair Taiwan has kicked off a promotional campaign worth almost NT$100 million for its flights between Taiwan and Japan to attract more Japanese tourists to the local market.

On Tuesday Tigerair Taiwan will inaugurate a flight to Fukushima as the 19th destination to Japan, Chen said, adding that his airline was studying the feasibility of flying to other Japanese destinations such as Tottori, Shizuoka, Shimane, Oita and Miyazaki in the future.

Elsewhere in the region, Chen said, Tigerair Taiwan is planning to fly to Hong Kong in mid-2025, while the airlines are considering flying to Xiamen, Fuzhou, Zhangjiajie, Wuxi and Tianjin.

In addition, Angkor Wat of Cambodia is a possible new destination for Tigerair Taiwan, and it will start to fly to Haiphong of Vietnam soon.