Russia's Transaero Airlines has recently launched a landmark, non-stop flight between Taipei and Moscow.
The service is expected to meet growing tourist demand, a tour company representative said yesterday.
A Transaero aircraft arrived at CKS airport over the weekend and was to leave on its return flight yesterday with 180 passengers on board, said Webby Yang, a spokesperson for Taiwan Orchid Express, the company which organized the charter.
"The flight has been fully booked. This is a good omen for future flights," Yang said.
The airline will provide one flight every two weeks between Jan. 19 and March 15, with an additional flight to meet demand over the course of the Lunar New Year holiday.
The direct charter cuts the flight time to 11 hours from the 20 hours travelers would normally face if they flew via a European hub.
The Russian airline signed an agreement with China Airlines (CAL) in October 2002, envisaging that a regular Moscow-Taipei link could be established.
But the service, due to start early last year, was postponed because of the SARS outbreak.
But CAL is not expected to restore the plan to fly to Moscow in the immediate future.
Some 10,000 businessmen and tourists travel to Russia each year, a tourism official estimated.
Negotiations for an aviation agreement between Taiwan and Russia have been bogged down in disagreements over tax.
They are now entering their 10th year.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching