Mao Chi-kuo, minister of transportation and communications, promised all-out help yesterday to ailing domestic airlines whose passenger numbers have dwindled by two-thirds in the past decade.

Reporting on domestic air services before the Legislative Yuan transportation committee, Mao admitted bullet trains have wooed away domestic air travelers.

In 1997, Mao said, the combined domestic loads hit the peak at 18.61 million flight passengers. The figure plummeted to 6.32 million last year, down by 66 percent in the decade.

Taiwan open its vaunted high-speed railway service last year, forcing domestic carriers to reduce or cancel many intra-island flights.

More and more travelers take bulletin trains, which travel between Taipei to Kaohsiung in 90 minutes. Short hauls, such as those between Taipei and Taichung, have had to be canceled, while airlines are finding fewer and fewer passengers aboard their Taipei-Kaohsiung flights.

Urged to do something to help the domestic carriers, Mao said they will be given government assistance in inaugurating "regional" flight routes.

By regional routes Mao meant services in Asia with Taiwan as the hub.

"With the opening of high-speed railway service," Mao told lawmakers at the committee meeting, "our airline industry is undergoing a structural change."

Intra-island services are being taken over by the bullet trains, Mao said. "Airline companies have to find new international routes to cope with this structural change," he added.

He is hopeful that regular direct flights across the Taiwan Strait will get under way next year. Currently, only direct chartered flights are allowed on weekends.

Chen Yunlin, chairman of the Association for Relations across the Taiwan Strait, is scheduled to arrive in Taipei early next month for talks to make regular direct flights a reality.

Talks will be held between Chen and his counterpart in Taipei, Straits Exchange Foundation chairman P. K. Chiang, to open more destinations in China for direct flights from Taiwan.

That is one way the administration can help domestic airline companies.

Negotiations are also under way to start new routes to Japan and other countries in Asia, Mao said. Taichung is expected to start charter flights for Shizuoka near Tokyo shortly.

"Similar services may be launched to reach a few Southeast Asian cities," Mao pointed out.

Though his ministry cannot help airline companies to keep their intra-island flights, Mao was urged to subsidize services to Taiwan's offshore islands, including Penghu, Quemoy and Matsu.

Moreover, legislators demanded the government help the Taiwan Railway Administration serve "remote places" the bullet trains do not reach.

"The rights of our citizens in remote places that the high-speed railway service doesn't reach must be protected," Kuomintang legislator Yang Jen-fu demanded.