Air Canada’s daily, year-round service between Vancouver and Taipei has taken off, marking the airline’s return to Taiwan after it cut services to the island back in 2002.

The newly revived Taipei flights are the second new Asia-Pacific route the carrier has launched this month, following the commencement of its Vancouver-Nagoya four-times-weekly seasonal service on June 1. Unlike the Nagoya flights, which are operated under the Air Canada Rouge brand using a B767-300ER, the airline’s Taipei flights will be operated under the mainline Air Canada brand using its B787-9 Dreamliner. This means 30 lie-flat pod suites (1-2-1) will be available in business class along with 21 premium economy (2-3-2) and 247 economy class (3-3-3) seats.

“Air Canada is very pleased to return to Taipei, an important and significant economic centre, as part of our ongoing global expansion,” said the airline’s president of passenger airlines, Benjamin Smith.

“Our Taipei flights are operated with our state-of-the-art Boeing 787 Dreamliners featuring our industry-leading international services. The strategic addition of these daily year-round flights strengthens our YVR trans-Pacific hub which, combined with our extensive North American network, provides convenient options and a competitive elapsed travel time between North American and Taiwan.”

Flight AC011 departs Vancouver at 1110 local time and arrives in Taipei the following day at 1415. The return AC012 service then flies out of the Taiwan capital at 1555, landing in Vancouver at 1125.

Air Canada has been notably eyeing connectivity to Asia-Pacific, with a seasonal Vancouver-Melbourne service set to launch this December. The route is currently scheduled to run from December 1, 2017 to February 4, 2018.

Meanwhile, its codeshare agreement with Virgin Australia kicked off late last month, providing access to the Australian carrier’s domestic network.

aircanada.com