China began commercial flights along its controversial M503 air route yesterday morning, with six international flights employing it, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said.
No “abnormal movements” were detected along the route, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday.
Critics say the new route — unilaterally announced by Beijing — is too close to Taiwan’s airspace.
Council officials said they would continue monitoring the route and take appropriate measures to protect Taiwan’s national security.
The establishment of the new route in China’s Shanghai flight information region sparked national security concerns, as part of it is just 7.8km from the median line of the Taiwan Strait. The Strait’s median line is the de facto boundary between Taiwan and China.
CAA records from yesterday showed that six flights had used the route as of 11:30am, with five of them departing from Shanghai Pudong Airport and one leaving from Qindao.
Of the Shanghai flights, four were Dragonair trips to Hong Kong, and one was a Malaysia Airlines flight to Kuala Lumpur. The one leaving from Qingdao was a China Eastern Airlines flight to Hong Kong.
The CAA said that none of these flights deviated from the route and maintained altitudes of 31,000 feet (9,449m) or above.
The agency said that 16 airline companies have applied to use the route, adding that the number of daily flights should not exceed 30.
Beijing had planned to start sending commercial aircraft along the route on March 5.
Due to a fierce reaction from the Taiwanese public, China and Taiwan engaged in cross-strait negotiations. China postponed the launch of the route to yesterday and agreed to move it to the west by 6 nautical miles (11km).
In a report to the legislature on Thursday last week, National Security Bureau Director-General Lee Shying-jow (李翔宙) said that the modified commercial route — now slightly closer to China than originally planned — would leave Taiwan with considerable leeway to react to any potential air attacks and would reduce China’s own patrol areas for Chinese fighter jets in the Taiwan Strait.
In other news, the CAA yesterday said it would announce its new aviation safety bulletin today, asking all domestic airlines to amend their safety management procedures by requiring that there be at least two members of the flight crew in the cockpit at all times during flights.
It added that it would conduct inspections to determine whether airlines observe the new rule.
Prior to the announcement, most domestic airlines announced over the weekend that they would start enforcing the rule following the crash of Germanwings Flight 4U9525 on Tuesday last week.
French air accident investigators released some evidence from the cockpit voice recorder on Thursday that seemed to show the pilot was locked out of the cockpit during the flight and that the copilot was alone inside the cockpit before the fatal crash occurred.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
RSS