Charter flights carry 698 passengers
(China Daily)
Updated: 2005-02-07 06:56

GUANGZHOU: China Southern Airlines (CSA) and two Taiwan airlines flew six charter flights carrying 698 passengers between Guangzhou, the capital of South China's Guangdong Province, and Taipei on Saturday.

A source with the airlines said that 566 passengers flew from Guangzhou to Taipei. An additional 132 passengers flew from Taipei to Guangzhou.

The CZ3097 flight of CSA departed Guangzhou at 10 am (Beijing Time) and landed at Taipei at 11:27 am. The CZ3098 flight of CSA departed Taipei 12:59 and arrived at Guangzhou at 2:38 pm.

The other four flights were run by Taiwan's Far East Air Transport and China Airlines.

The CSA source said that 90 per cent of the seats for the February 7 and February 15 flights have been sold.

The first charter plane in 56 years from the Chinese mainland carrying 242 Taiwan business people and their families landed in Taipei without a stopover on January 29.

The charter flights that day unveiled the curtain of a three-week-long special charter flight scheme, under which 12 airlines of the mainland and Taiwan would run 48 non-stop, round-trip flights exclusively for Taiwan business people and their families.

Mainland and Taiwan civil aviation professionals reached consensus about the launch of the charter flights early last month in Macao. The two sides agreed to run the flights from January 29 to February 20 between mainland cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou and Taiwan's Taipei and Kaohsiung.

The charter flights were warmly welcomed by the Taiwan business people and their relatives.

According to a schedule publicized by the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China, there will be a total of 34 charter flights before the start of the traditional Spring Festival, which falls on February 9.

(China Daily 02/07/2005 page2)

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