Taiwanese airlines have made ten-tative plans for six charter flights to China to bring businesspeople home for the Lunar New Year holiday between Jan. 26 and Feb. 10, an airline industry association official told the Taipei Times yesterday.
The six airlines may each provide one round-trip flight between Shanghai and Taipei, said Su Hsien-lung (
Last week the government approved a plan to allow Taiwanese carriers to apply to run charter flights to shuttle businesspeople who live and work in China back home during the holidays.
The government said the char-ters, which are subject to China's approval, must not carry passengers on the outbound leg and must land in either Hong Kong or Macau en route to Shanghai.
Negotiations with Chinese authorities over technical issues seem to be unavoidable, after the Civil Aviation Administration of China said it wanted to hold non-government talks on technical details last week.
"We haven't held formal talks,'' said Pu Zhaozhou, head of the Taiwan division at the Civil Aviation Administration of China. "It's like a friend or neighbor who wants to visit you. They need to call you to check if you are in."
Taiwan's concerns over security and sovereignty have made businesspeople hesitant to register their interest in the flights, said Chan Ching-chih (
"People don't want to wait until the last minute to find out if they can go home [by charters], so they resorted to normal commercial flights,'' Chan said.
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