Taiwan and China reached agreement yesterday on adding extra flights between the two sides following an argument over flight routes and time slots, China’s state media said.
“The two sides talked about many technical issues and the mainland sought Taiwan’s understanding regarding the status quo of the mainland’s busy air routes,” Xinhua news agency said. “Further, both sides agreed to resume additional flights as soon as possible and strengthen talks over cross-Straits aviation exchanges.”
Meanwhile, Civil Aeronautics Administration Director-General Ying Chen-pong (尹承蓬) confirmed last night that the two sides have reached a consensus to add more flights per week as soon as possible, the Central News Agengy said.
The dispute stemmed from a talk between Taiwanese and Chinese in May to allow carriers from each side to fly 50 additional nonstop cross-strait flights per week, starting in June, to meet growing market demand.
As part of the deal, carriers from each country have been operating 14 new weekly flights between Taipei’s Songshan Airport and Shanghai’s Hongqiao Airport since mid-June.
However, China rejected most of the other applications by Taiwanese carriers for new flight routes because the arrangement would not have met Beijing’s requirement that 20 of the 50 new flights serve Xiamen or Fuzhou.
Taiwanese officials, though, have said the May agreement did not require Taiwanese carriers to operate any additional flights to the two cities since the airlines were already running a total of 22 weekly flights to those destinations as part of their original quota of 135 flights per week.
After China rejected the Taiwanese carriers’ applications, Taiwan retaliated by ordering Chinese carriers to suspend 31 of their 36 newly approved cross-strait flights with effect from Aug. 1, and the other five flights from Oct. 30.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
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