Wall Street anchor quits million-dollar salary to launch 'cheap flights website' in Taiwan

Reported and photographed by You T-Ru / Taipei

Among travel agencies in Taiwan, there’s a famous saying: "The travel industry is one that fulfills others’ dreams at the expense of your own." Huang Jieshi, a former news anchor on New York’s Wall Street, recalls her childhood as a “latchkey kid,” coming home every day to an empty house, which brought her to tears. Because of this experience, she says she once secretly vowed to herself: “I will never take over the family travel business.”


▲Quitting her million-dollar Wall Street anchor salary, Huang Jieshi returns to Taiwan to launch a cheap flights website.

Huang Jieshi, a graduate of New York University’s graduate school and founder of the low-cost flight booking website “iFly,” spotted opportunities in the backpacker market and changes in travel trends in recent years. She decided to leave her high-paying Wall Street anchor job and return to take over the family business, bringing fresh thinking to a traditional industry. Her goal is to establish a different business model in the travel industry by expanding e-commerce.

“Actually, I didn’t want to give up my overseas job because it was so hard to get there in the first place,” Huang said. She had originally planned to continue working in media in New York, but her father’s daily phone calls, reporting fake “heart attacks” to pressure her to return home and take over the business, changed her mind.

Back at her family business in Kaohsiung, Huang’s first role was in sales. “At the time, I wore my Wall Street anchor suit and heels to visit clients, and was immediately thrown out,” she recalled. Not only was she treated as persona non grata by southern Taiwan travel agents, but her family also received complaints from competitors saying, “Tell that snob not to come back.” After a low period of struggle within the family, Huang reconsidered what she could do and resolved to innovate the traditional family business by integrating it with the internet.

“Isn’t there a flight booking website where you can see everything at a glance, without waiting for standby seats, and book directly online if there’s availability, so you can depart right away?” Imagining her own ticket-booking habits, Huang restructured the model—from digitizing and modernizing internal agency processes to connecting with various airline systems. After three years, and by chance, she partnered with Amadeus, the world’s largest reservation system company. With their web technology support and multiple system tests, iFly officially launched in 2011.

In the early days of the website, Huang targeted independent and adventurous backpackers, offering membership-based services online. By connecting with airlines, the platform could search up to 200 available low-cost flight options at once. Different from other flight websites on the market, it allowed direct airline connections, instant seat availability, and eliminated the need to compare prices across different airlines. Within the same platform, users could view 49 fare options for the seven days before and after their travel date, as well as freely choose departure and return flight times.

“In the future, we will target the business traveler segment,” Huang noted. Business travelers need flexible, immediate-departure fares, and iFly not only makes the search convenient but also stores lists of frequent customers, enabling the fastest booking process for them. Additionally, Huang said she does not rule out future collaboration opportunities with low-cost carriers, hoping to create more opportunities for the emerging industry.