Charter flights in doubt amid lack of agreement

China-based businesspeople may not be able to take charter flights home in this coming Lunar New Year as the governments on both sides of the Taiwan Strait have not put concrete measures on the table, Taiwanese carriers said yesterday.

An association representing six domestic airlines said a lack of demand has forced carriers to drop plans for cross-strait charter flights during the holiday.

"We just didn't see the demand from China-based business groups this year," said Solo Su (蘇賢榮), secretary-general of the Taipei Airlines Association (北市航空運輸公會). "Moreover, there isn't sufficient time for preparation."

Last Lunar New Year, six local airlines -- China Airlines Co (華航), EVA Airways Corp (長榮), Mandarin Airlines (華信), TransAsia Airways (復興), Far Eastern Air Transport Co (遠東) and Uni Airways (立榮航空) -- were for the first time in five decades allowed to make indirect charter flights to take home thousands of Taiwanese businesspeople with transit stops in Hong Kong or Macau.

The flights were generally welcomed by passengers and were being considered for the coming Lunar New Year. Taiwanese carriers had proposed repeating the indirect service to Shanghai and expanding it to Beijing, as well as other cities in China.

While Taiwanese authorities have asked their Chinese counterparts to sit down and discuss the issue, the offer was rejected by Beijing, which said it should be negotiated by airlines.

While the failure of the two sides to hold formal talks on the plan has contributed to the flights being scrapped, Su said he believes the opening of new routes by various carriers resulted in low demand.

Janet So (湛華生), public relations manager at TransAsia Airways, agreed. She said bookings of Shanghai-to-Taipei flights from Jan. 16 to Jan. 21 were already full, and the off-peak days during the Lunar New Year were 80 percent to 90 percent full.

So did not rule out the possibility of running similar flights to last year's if the two governments reach consensus on the issue, along with a surge in demand.

China Airlines, however, dismissed media speculation that domestic airlines had refused to arrange the charter flights because the one-way route is a money-losing business.

"We never said we don't want to fly the route during the Lunar New Year. The truth is, we haven't received any official announcement regarding the plan," Roger Han (韓梁中), spokesman for China Airlines, said yesterday.