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Regular cross-Straits flights urged
By Xing Zhigang/Pan Haixia (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-02-08 06:10
A senior civil aviation official called for the establishment of regular
charter flights across the Taiwan Straits as the Spring Festival charter-flight
programme ended yesterday.
Packed to capacity with 260 Taiwan passengers, Shanghai Airlines' flight
FM808 flew in from Taipei to Pudong International Airport at around 2:30 pm.
![Passengers disembark from Xiamen Airlines' Flight MF884 at Gaoqi airport in Xiamen, a port city in East China's Fujian Province February 7, 2006. The flight, on its return from Kaohsiung, marked the end of the cross-Straits charter flights for this Spring Festival. [Xinhua]](xin_550203080714639262129.jpg)
Passengers
disembark from Xiamen Airlines' Flight MF884 at Gaoqi airport in Xiamen, a
port city in East China's Fujian Province February 7, 2006. The flight, on
its return from Kaohsiung, marked the end of the cross-Straits charter
flights for this Spring Festival. [Xinhua] |
Flight MF884 of Xiamen Airlines touched down at Gaoqi airport in Xiamen, a
port city in East China's Fujian Province, at 3:25pm on its return from
Kaohsiung.
They were the last two round-trip cross-Straits charter flights for the
Spring Festival.
Six Taiwan and six mainland airlines operated a total of 72 non-stop
round-trip charter flights between January 20 and yesterday.
About 27,000 passengers took the flights this year, compared with 10,000 in
48 round-trip flights last year.
Pu Zhaozhou, director of the Office of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao Affairs
under the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China, yesterday hailed
the success of the scheme. "We will focus on cross-Straits charter flights for
major festivals and weekends or even making them regular all year long," he told
China Daily.
Pu, the mainland's top negotiator for cross-Straits charter flights,
suggested Beijing push for early talks on the issue this year.
It was the third year the two sides of the Straits operated charter flights
during the Lunar New Year holidays.
Due to Taipei's decades-old ban on the three direct links trade, transport
and postal services across the Straits, travellers have to make an extra stop,
typically in Hong Kong or Macao.
But in a one-off programme, non-stop charter flights were run between
Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Xiamen on the mainland, and Taipei and
Kaohsiung on the island this year through Hong Kong airspace.
The 12 Taiwan and mainland airlines in this year's charter programme offered
a total of 32,076 seats and reported an average passenger occupancy rate of more
than 80 per cent.
An estimated 1 million Taiwan people work or live on the mainland. Last year,
Taiwan people paid more than 4.1 million visits to the
mainland.
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