A two-day festival to celebrate the upcoming launch of direct flights between Taipei Songshan Airport and Tokyo’s Haneda Airport was held on the weekend, drawing large crowds.
The Songshan-Haneda flights, scheduled to begin on Sunday, are expected to boost the number of people traveling between the two countries each year from the current 2 million to 3 million, said the Japan Interchange Association, the organizer of the fair.
The event, held in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義), featured an exhibition of the traditional Japanese tea ceremony, a Japanese taiko drum performance, a rock concert, as well as a lucky draw and various promotions by travel agencies and airlines to generate interest in the new flights.
“The launch of Songshan-Haneda flights will help promote the 2010-2011 Taiwan-Japan tourism exchange year,” said Tadashi Imai, head of the Japan Interchange Association’s Taipei office.
Imai was referring to a campaign designed to promote cultural and artistic exchanges between Japan and Taiwan after the third Taiwan-Japan Tourism Summit Forum, which took place in March.
All four carriers that will provide Songshan-Haneda flights — China Airlines, EVA Airways, Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways — used the fair to promote their services.
The carriers said they would each offer two flights from Songshan to Haneda a day, with fares of about NT$14,000 for round-trip tickets, with stays of up to 30 days.
Songshan Airport offered direct flights to Haneda until 1979, when international flights were relocated to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, then known as Chiang Kai-shek Airport.
An increase in Taiwanese boats using China-made automatic identification systems (AIS) could confuse coast guards patrolling waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast and become a loophole in the national security system, sources familiar with the matter said yesterday. Taiwan ADIZ, a Facebook page created by enthusiasts who monitor Chinese military activities in airspace and waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast, on Saturday identified what seemed to be a Chinese cargo container ship near Penghu County. The Coast Guard Administration went to the location after receiving the tip and found that it was a Taiwanese yacht, which had a Chinese AIS installed. Similar instances had also
GOOD DIPLOMACY: The KMT has maintained close contact with representative offices in Taiwan and had extended an invitation to Russia as well, the KMT said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would “appropriately handle” the fallout from an invitation it had extended to Russia’s representative to Taipei to attend its international banquet last month, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday. US and EU representatives in Taiwan boycotted the event, and only later agreed to attend after the KMT rescinded its invitation to the Russian representative. The KMT has maintained long-term close contact with all representative offices and embassies in Taiwan, and had extended the invitation as a practice of good diplomacy, Chu said. “Some EU countries have expressed their opinions of Russia, and the KMT respects that,” he
VIGILANCE: The military is paying close attention to actions that might damage peace and stability in the region, the deputy minister of national defense said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) might consider initiating a hack on Taiwanese networks on May 20, the day of the inauguration ceremony of president-elect William Lai (賴清德), sources familiar with cross-strait issues said. While US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s statement of the US expectation “that all sides will conduct themselves with restraint and prudence in the period ahead” would prevent military actions by China, Beijing could still try to sabotage Taiwan’s inauguration ceremony, the source said. China might gain access to the video screens outside of the Presidential Office Building and display embarrassing messages from Beijing, such as congratulating Lai
Four China Coast Guard ships briefly sailed through prohibited waters near Kinmen County, Taipei said, urging Beijing to stop actions that endanger navigation safety. The Chinese ships entered waters south of Kinmen, 5km from the Chinese city of Xiamen, at about 3:30pm on Monday, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement later the same day. The ships “sailed out of our prohibited and restricted waters” about an hour later, the agency said, urging Beijing to immediately stop “behavior that endangers navigation safety.” Ministry of National Defense spokesman Sun Li-fang (孫立方) yesterday told reporters that Taiwan would boost support to the Coast Guard