Government officials will greet historic charter flights from China on Jan. 29, the day when the special service begins to carry Taiwan businesspeople home for the Lunar New Year holiday, a Mainland Affairs Council official said yesterday.
According to the official, council Vice Chairman Chiu Tai-san (邱太三), Civil Aeronautics Administration Director-General Billy Chang (張國政) and officials from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications and the Straits Exchange Foundation will get together that day at CKS International Airport to welcome the planes coming from China.
Celebrations will also be held at Kaohsiung International Airport.
Nine flights will be offered on the first day of the direct service, to be provided by six aviation companies from either side of the Taiwan Strait.
At present, about 4,000 Taiwan businesspeople and their dependents in China -- 2,400 in Shanghai, 1,050 in Guangzhou and 480 in Beijing -- have applied to take the direct charter flights to Taiwan.
Airlines do not expect the routes to make money.
Officials from Taiwan and China agreed on the flight model earlier this month in Macau, under which Chinese carriers are also included in the service.
It marks a departure from 2003, when the first such charter flights took off -- operated solely by Taiwanese airlines which had to fly via Hong Kong or Macau.
The flights were not offered last year because of China's refusal to talk with Taiwan over its demand that Chinese carriers be also allowed to operate the flights.
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
A relatively large earthquake may strike within the next two weeks, following a magnitude 5.2 temblor that shook Taitung County this morning, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. An earthquake struck at 8:18am today 10.2km west of Taitung County Hall in Taitung City at a relatively shallow depth of 6.5km, CWA data showed. The largest intensity of 4 was felt in Taitung and Pingtung counties, which received an alert notice, while areas north of Taichung did not feel any shaking, the CWA said. The earthquake was the result of the collision between the Philippine Plate and the Eurasian Plate, the agency said, adding
Snow fell in the mountainous areas of northern, central and eastern Taiwan in the early hours of yesterday, as cold air currents moved south. In the northern municipality of Taoyuan, snow started falling at about 6am in Fusing District (復興), district head Su Tso-hsi (蘇佐璽) said. By 10am, Lalashan National Forest Recreation Area, as well as Hualing (華陵), Sanguang (三光) and Gaoyi (高義) boroughs had seen snowfall, Su said. In central Taiwan, Shei-Pa National Park in Miaoli County and Hehuanshan National Forest Recreation Area in Nantou County saw snowfall of 5cm and 6cm respectively, by 10am, staff at the parks said. It began snowing
The 2025 Kaohsiung Wonderland–Winter Amusement Park event has teamed up with the Japanese manga series Chiikawa this year for its opening at Love River Bay yesterday, attracting more than 10,000 visitors, the city government said. Following the success of the “2024 Kaohsiung Wonderland” collaboration with a giant inflatable yellow duck installation designed by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, this year the Kaohsiung Tourism Bureau collaborated with Chiikawa by Japanese illustrator Nagano to present two giant inflatable characters. Two inflatable floats — the main character, Chiikwa, a white bear-like creature with round ears, and Hachiware, a white cat with a blue-tipped tail
RSS