Nearly 1.6 million passengers have been served over the past year since direct cross-strait charter flights were launched on July 4 last year, a report by the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said.
Air carriers on both sides of the Strait operated a total of 4,008 flights, carrying 1,597,000 passengers as of June 30 this year, CAA statistics showed.
These carriers also operated 177 cargo flights across the Strait, transporting 18,717 tonnes of cargo since Dec. 15 last year, when direct cross-strait cargo flights were opened, the data showed.
A total of 859 direct cross-strait weekend charter flights were operated between July 4 and Dec. 14 last year, serving 336,000 passengers and representing an average passenger load factor of 85.3 percent, the data showed.
From Dec. 15 to June 30 this year, a total of 3,149 direct cross-strait daily charter flights were operated, transporting 1.26 million passengers, the CAA said.
This represented a passenger load factor of 81.5 percent for Taiwanese airline companies and 75.3 percent for Chinese carriers, the CAA said.
CAA officials said that at present, the number of daily direct cross-strait charter flights stands at 108 per week, up from 36 per week in July last year, when only weekend flights were allowed.
The officials said regularly scheduled cross-strait flights are expected to be formally launched sometime this month, with 270 flights available each week.
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