Taiwanese airline EVA Air has commenced passenger flights to Mumbai from the capital city of Taipei. The carrier is operating three services a week – Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays - to Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus using Boeing 747 combis.

India is emerging as an important destination for the company, with airlines operating out of India registering an increase in passenger traffic. The market is also important due to an increased growth in tourism and business.

Eva has signed a code-sharing agreement with Air India for the new service, which enables passengers to take connection flights to US West Coast from the Taipei. The carrier is Air India's fifth code-sharing partner to US, while the Indian national carrier has similar agreements with Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines, Malaysia Airlines and Asiana.

The airline has awarded the catering contract to Taj SATS Air Catering, a joint venture between Indian Hotels Company and Singapore Airport Terminal Services (SATS). The catering company will service the outbound passengers travelling by Eva from Mumbai.

The carrier, which is owned by shipping firm Evergreen group, also has freighter services to Mumbai. The carrier's passenger operations serve 30 airports with a fleet of B747-400s, B747 Combi, B767-200s and MD-11 aircraft.

It is also planning to convert eight 747-400s to freighters, with the first conversion slated to enter service early next year. The airline will replace the carrier's MD-11Fs. EVA will convert one of its three outstanding 777-200LR orders to a dash 300ER and the balance to dash 200Fs.

It had ordered the Dash 200LRs to perform the Taipei -New York mission year round but found that the Dash 300ER has 3 per cent lower fuel burn than guaranteed.

At present, Eva Air flies to over 40 destinations on four continents, including Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and North America .

Earlier, Eva Airways has selected Kale Consultancy Service's proration solution Apex for automating passenger ticket proration. The airline has signed a five-year contract with Kale for the suite. With Apex, Eva Air would be able to implement industry best practices in proration and bring about improvements in accuracy and efficiency of proration process.

Apex is one of the only two proration engines chosen by IATA for Neutral Fare Proration (NFP) in AIA's First & Final (F&F) Interline Billing Service. Several airlines are already using the suite – either as an in-house solution or as an outsourced service. The solution architecture makes use of modern, open-platform technology and has been designed keeping in mind year-on-year growth in airline's ticket volumes.