Far Eastern Air Transport (Taipei Sung Shan) suspended sales of tickets on December 12 and subsequently announced that it will cease all operations from December 13 onwards.
The carrier said via its website that it had "difficulties raising funds due to long-term operating losses".
Initially, the airline said that ticket sales were only suspended due to "systems' maintenance".
The airline reportedly suffered financially due to the poor reliability and high operating costs of its McDonnell Douglas (Long Beach) twinjets.
According to the ch-aviation fleets module, the airline operates six ATR72-600s, four MD-82s, and three MD-83s (of which two have been inactive since mid-September and early November 2019). The MD-82s are 25.4 years old on average and the MD-83s - 23.4 years. The airline expected to start taking deliveries of eleven B737-8s from lessors in November 2019 but this was delayed due to the type's grounding.
Flightradar24 ADS-B data indicates that all aircraft except for the two grounded MD-82 were active on December 12.
It flew predominantly domestically, deploying 90.7% of its scheduled capacity - or 50.1 thousand seats per week - within Taiwan. FAT's core routes were to the outlying islands of Penghu and Kinmen, which it served from Taipei Sung Shan, Kaohsiung, and Taichung Ching Chuan Kang.
According to the ch-aviation capacities module, FAT has a 39.4% market share by capacity to Kinmen and a 41.0% market share to Penghu.
The airline's international network included Fuzhou, Akita, Hefei, Jeju, Xiamen, and Niigata. The international network was already greatly reduced earlier this year.
