The government yesterday reached an agreement with China to bring Taiwanese tourists home from earthquake-stricken Sichuan Province via direct charter flights.
“After bilateral coordination, China agreed to allow our planes to fly directly to Chongqing to bring our tourists back home,” Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) said yesterday afternoon.
The Travel Agent Association (TAA) said there were still 1,755 Taiwanese tourists in Sichuan Province and 1,143 in the Jiuzhaigou Valley at noon yesterday.
PHOTO: AFP
Owing to a lack of flights out of Sichuan’s Shuangliu International Airport in the wake of the devastating quake, only 173 Taiwanese were expected to be able to obtain seats on a plane to Hong Kong yesterday afternoon, the association said.
Twenty-six others are expected to get a flight home today, association officials said.
Mainland Affairs Council Chairman Chen Ming-tong (陳明通) told Chang that a deal on cross-strait charter flights for humanitarian purposes had been concluded at 3:30pm yesterday.
The arrangement was reached with the mediation of the TAA, the institution that had been commissioned by the government to negotiate with Beijing on routine charter flights in 2005.
The government initially wanted the flights to land at Shuangliu International Airport in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, near where the earthquake occurred, but decided to use Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport instead, as the Shuangliu airport was experiencing heavy traffic as relief efforts continued, Chen said.
Because of political differences, there are no direct air links between Taiwan and China, and people traveling across the Taiwan Strait are required to fly through a third area, usually Hong Kong or Macau.
Taiwan has been negotiating with China on routine cross-strait charter flights since 2005 to replace the ban on direct air flights that was implemented after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) fled to Taiwan in 1949.
The first direct charter flight was implemented during the Lunar New Year holidays in 2005 to facilitate the transportation of Taiwanese businesspeople and their families.
Both sides of the Strait agreed in June 2006 to expand the scope of charter flights, including specialized cargo charter flights, the institutionalization of holiday passenger charter flights, charter flights for emergency medical treatment and special humanitarian charter flights for emergency relief and persons with disabilities or illness.
TAA chairman Yao Ta-kuang (姚大光) told a press conference later yesterday that TransAsia Airways (復興航空) would undertake the first flight to Chongqing this afternoon, which is to be followed by flights by China Airlines (華航) and EVA Air (長榮航空) this evening.
Taiwanese in Sichuan intending to make use of the flights should register with the TAA’s emergency command center in Chengdu, and the number to call is 0939-210-020, Yao said.
Meanwhile, two charter cargo planes provided by China Airlines, which flew directly to Chengdu, and Air Macau, which flew via Macau, landed in Sichuan later yesterday, carrying hundreds of tonnes of relief items donated by various charity groups in Taiwan.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said that China had informed the Taiwanese branch of the Red Cross yesterday of its requirements for relief assistance.
The Taipei City Fire Department would team up with the Red Cross to send 20 relief workers to assist with rescue operations in the disaster zone this afternoon, Hau said.
Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (台灣高鐵) executive director Ou Chin-der (歐晉德), who was previoulsy a board member of the Red Cross Society of the Republic of China, will lead the relief workers and a rescue dog to Chengdu today, Hau said.
Ou has extensive experience in leading relief work in Taipei City during the 921 earthquake in 1999.
Meanwhile, the Straits Exchange Foundation said that 22 Taiwanese who had either been traveling to or visiting Sichuan Province could not be reached yesterday.
Among them are 14 members of a tour group from Hsichou Township whose trip was organized by a travel agency in Changhua County.
Another eight people were either on backpack tours or visiting relatives.
The tour group has not been in contact with Taiwan since lunch time on Monday, approximately two hours before the magnitude-7.9 earthquake struck, Yao said at a news conference.
Yao said that the ashes of Taiwanese tourist Wang Min-chuan (王民權), who plunged to his death from a cable car in Dujiangyan during a rescue attempt by Chinese rescuers on Tuesday, would be returned home by his brothers today.
Wang, 56, plummeted to the ground on Tuesday as he was being rescued from a cable car that was stranded mid-air over Dujiangyan, Sichuan Province, after the earthquake struck on Monday, an official at the Straits Exchange Foundation said.
Wang was sent to a nearby hospital, where he died at 11:40pm on Tuesday.
Ten other people who had also been trapped in the 50m-high cable car system were brought to safety.
TAA figures show more than 3,000 Taiwanese tourists were in Sichuan when the earthquake struck.
About 1,000 of them have managed to return to Taiwan via Hong Kong over the past three days.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY MO YAN-CHIH AND CNA
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