Taiwan and U.S. transportation officials will meet next month to discuss a plan to allow passengers on flights from the United States to transit through Taiwan without having to undergo an additional security check, Taiwanese officials said Sunday.
Speaking to CNA, Civil Aeronautics Administration Director General Lin Kuo-shien (林國顯) said he will be part of a group heading to the U.S. in late July to discuss the plan with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
The group will also conduct on-site inspections of the Los Angeles and San Francisco airports, he said.
After the group returns to Taiwan, the Aviation Police Bureau will submit a report on the proposal, which if adopted, could reduce transit times by 30-60 minutes, Lin estimated.
Han Chen-hua (韓振華), deputy head of the Transportation Ministry's Department of Navigation and Aviation, said the new transit procedures could be rolled out in the second half of this year.
From Taiwan's perspective, he said, the policy would help increase the number of transiting passengers from the U.S., thus bolstering the government's efforts to establish Taiwan as a regional transport hub.
Taiwan and the U.S. reached an agreement in 2019 that allowed travelers on flights from the U.S. to avoid having their checked baggage screened while transiting through Taiwan.
Such passengers are still required, however, to pass through a security check before proceeding to the departure area for their connecting flights.
According to Taiwan government data, passenger volume at Taoyuan International Airport hit 48.68 million in 2019, the last year before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, of which 2.96 million, or 6.1 percent, were transit or transfer passengers.
Of the transit/transfer passengers, 80 percent were on flights from North America to (and back from) Southeast Asia, and around 750,000 of them were on flights that originated in the U.S., the statistics showed.
