Minister of Transportation and Communications Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) said yesterday that China could no longer use technical reasons to cap the number of cross-strait flights because it has managed to add close to 300 additional flights for the Lunar New Year holiday.
“In the past, whenever we talked about the possibility of increasing the number of cross-strait flights, they always used technical reasons to stop us from doing so,” Mao said.
“We only approved 98 additional flights this time. They, on the other hand, approved about 300 additional flights, three times more. The excuse they gave us is no longer valid,” he said, adding that the time slots the Civil Aviation Administration of China gave Taiwanese airlines were “awful.”
Mao said he has asked the Civil Aeronautics Administration to negotiate with its counterpart on when to announce the schedules for the additional holiday flights, because the airlines have complained that China was late in approving the schedules and has left them hardly any time to relay the information to consumers.
Civil Aeronautics Administration Director-General Lee Lung-wen (李龍文) said yesterday that his agency would start negotiating with China about adding more flights after the Lunar New Year holiday.
Eighty percent of the seats on the additional flights for the second and third weeks of this month have been sold.
“We hope that cross-strait negotiations could follow the principle of faith and trust, and they can increase the flights based on the actual market demand,” Lee said.
Both sides have capped total cross-strait flights at 270 per week. However, Chinese and Taiwanese airlines are allowed to provide additional flights for national holidays, including the Lunar New Year, Tomb Sweeping Day and Mid-Autumn Festival.
Meanwhile, Mao said the Tourism Bureau would soon negotiate with China about Chinese tourism issues.
Bureau statistics showed that the number of overseas tourists increased by 14.3 percent last year, the highest among Asian countries.
Japan remained the No. 1 source of tourists with about 1 million Japanese visiting last year. China was second with 900,000 visitors.
“I have heard from cab drivers or shop owners that they have not had any Chinese tourists. My answer to their questions is that they need to look at this with a normal attitude,” Mao said.
Even though about 1 million Japanese visited last year, people did not feel that Japanese tourists were everywhere, he said.
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