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Chiang pushes Songshan for first cross-strait flights

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator John Chiang (蔣孝嚴) said yesterday that the first step toward the eventual opening of direct cross-strait links should be to begin direct flights between Taipei's Songshan Airport and Hong Kong or Macau.

In response, government officials said the airport's facilities were inadequate to handle international passenger traffic.

Speaking at a public hearing on whether Songshan Airport is ready for direct cross-strait flights, Chiang proposed that the government allow the airport to handle flights to and from Hong Kong and Macau as a step to direct flights to China.

The interim step was necessary, Chiang said, because Songshan Airport has already lost 70 percent of its domestic business to the Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp.

With 60 percent of Taiwanese who travel to China being located in the Greater Taipei area, Chiang said Songshan Airport could be redesignated as a special airport for direct cross-strait flight services while also continuing to serve domestic routes.

Chiang said he believed that remodeling Songshan Airport into an airport able to handle international flights should not be a daunting challenge since it served as an international airport before being downgraded to a domestic airport in 1979.

But Lin Hsin-teh (林信得), deputy director of the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA), said at the hearing that Songshan Airport's facilities were out of date and inadequately equipped for the customs, immigration and quarantine (CIQ) procedures commonplace at international gateways.

Lin said the airport's facilities were in this respect poorer than those at Hualien Airport and Makung Airport on Penghu.

"It would take at least 11 months and cost NT$100 million [US$3.3 million] for Songshan Airport to upgrade its CIQ services," Lin said.

Lin said the agency had already worked out plans to prepare the nation for the opening of direct air links with China, and that Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport -- not Songshan Airport -- would be the first airport to handle such flights.

Lin said, however, that the CAA would fully cooperate if the new administration decided to designate Songshan Airport as a base for direct air links between Taipei and Hong Kong or Macau.

Meanwhile, representatives of several Taiwan-based international carriers welcomed Chiang's idea at the hearing.

"Opening Songshan Airport to direct air links would make cross-strait travel much more convenient and Uni Air will do whatever it can to support the initiative if the government gives it the go-ahead," said Chen Hsiung-chih (陳雄志), a first deputy president of Uni Air, a subsidiary of EVA Air.
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