Commentary
Every day, international flights—including those carrying Canadian travellers—cross East Asia’s skies through the Taipei Flight Information Region (FIR). Managed by Taiwan, this single airspace is among the busiest in the world, handling over 1.6 million flights and some 64 million passengers in 2024, reaching 89 percent of the pre-pandemic level, with an outstanding record of safety and professionalism.
That safety is now under growing strain. Since 2022, the People’s Republic of China has carried out at least six large-scale military exercises in and around the Taiwan Strait, repeatedly declaring exclusion zones or conducting live-fire drills without proper advance notice. In the most recent three exercises, warning times shrank from two hours, to two minutes, to none at all….