Between January 29 and February 7, eleven charter flights
between Shanghai and Taiwan carried 343 passengers to the Chinese
mainland and 2,336 passengers to the island province, according to
aviation authorities.
The flights have now been suspended for the weeklong Spring
Festival, or Chinese Lunar New Year, holiday and will resume on
February 13.
Monday's flights were operated by Taiwan-based Trans Asia
Airways, Eva Air, Far Eastern Air Transport Co. and UNI Air and the
mainland's Shanghai Airlines. They carried 901 passengers to the
island province and 317 to Shanghai.
Mainland and Taiwan civil aviation professionals reached
consensus on the flights earlier last month in Macao. They agreed
to run them from January 29 to February 20 between the mainland
cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou and Taiwan's Taipei and
Kaohsiung.
The non-stop charter flight services were exclusively arranged
for Taiwan business people working on the mainland to return home
for Spring Festival, which is on February 9 this year.
It is estimated that there are more than 700,000 Taiwan people
working on the mainland and living there for most of the year.
(Xinhua News Agency February 8, 2005)