Air Macao announced on Wednesday that the company planned to open a new passenger flight route linking Shenzhen in south China's Guangdong Province to Taipei City in the island province of Taiwan via Macao on March 9.

The company said that it will launch a twice-daily service on the new route, which will cut the flight journey between the two cities by half. Otherwise, passengers leaving Guangdong for Taiwan would have to take land or ferry transportation to the Macao International Airport or to Hong Kong before getting on a plane.

According to the company's flight schedule, the flights each taking two hours and 55 minutes will take off at 8:55 am and 4:30 PM daily.

Air Macao with a fleet of 11 passenger and three cargo planes operates passenger and cargo services only in Asia, mainly the Chinese mainland and Taiwan. The airline company is among the carriers that operate semi-direct flights across the Taiwan Straits via Hong Kong and Macao.

The company opened charter flights on trial service between Shenzhen and Taipei during the passenger travel spree of Spring Festival or China's Lunar Year in January, which were warmly welcomed by Taiwan businessmen, since there are hundreds of thousands of Taiwan people who have businesses in Guangdong.

The Macao International Airport functions primarily as a hub for semi-direct flights between destinations in Taiwan and on the Chinese mainland.

(China Daily February 25, 2004)