Taiwanese back to mainland on charters
( 2003-02-07 09:57 ) (1 )

The first cross-Straits charter flight returning Taiwanese business people back to the mainland after Spring Festival landed at Shanghai's Pudong International Airport on Wednesday night.

Operated by Far East Airlines, the charter was part of a special service laid on by six Taiwanese airlines to fly the island's residents, working on Chinese mainland, home for the Chinese lunar new year holidays.

The six carriers are China Airlines, Far Eastern Air Transport Corp, EVA Airways, UNI Airways, Mandarin Airlines and TransAsia Airways.

All the flights are indirect, involving a brief stopover in Hong Kong or Macao at the requirement of the Taiwan authorities.

Far East Airlines will have a total of six flights, making it the busiest charter carrier, between Taiwan and Shanghai during the Spring Festival period. All the three return flights it arranges take off from Taipei at 6:30 pm with a stopover in Macao.

From January 26 to 30, a total of 1,293 Taiwanese living and working on the mainland flew to Taiwan on charter flights.

They are scheduled to return to Shanghai on eight charters between February 5 and 10.

On January 26, a China Airlines charter plane made history when it touched down at Shanghai's Pudong International Airport, the first airliner from Taiwan to arrive on the mainland in five decades.

The success of these indirect flights has raised hopes that direct flights between the mainland and the island can be realized.

But it took more than four hours for the China Airlines charter to fly from Shanghai to Taipei on January 26 because of the stopover in Hong Kong, said Xia Xinghua, director-general of the East China Regional Administration of Civil Aviation of China.

Ye Yigan, chairman of the China Eastern Air Group, said the charter flights cannot eradicate the inconvenience to Taiwan compatriots crossing the Straits.

Both Xia and Ye agreed that only direct flights can benefit people on the mainland and in Taiwan.