In addition to its flights to Shanghai and Shenzhen, Taichung’s Chingchuankang Airport will soon offer a weekly flight to Beijing, an official said on Friday.
“Once the program to expand cross-strait flights starts in July or August, the airport in central Taiwan will also offer one flight to Beijing each week in addition to Shanghai and Shenzhen [flights],” Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) Director-General Lee Lung-wen (李龍文).
Lee was responding to concerns that Taichung was losing out in the competition to handle direct flights to China.
“Talks with Taiwan’s carriers on arranging a weekly flight from Taiwan’s third-largest city, Taichung, to Beijing will start next week,” Lee said in response to complaints from legislators who represent districts in central Taiwan that Taichung was being left out.
About 5 million people, or 21 percent of the country’s population, live in central Taiwan, legislators said, adding that it was unfair to residents of the region that there were not enough direct flights between Taichung and China after non-stop charter flights were launched in July last year.
“It is normal that central Taiwan’s residents want more flights between Chingchuankang Airport and a larger number of Chinese destinations,” Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Tsang-min (林滄敏) said.
Although Taiwan is entitled to operate 135 cross-strait flights per week beginning this summer based on an accord reached in April between the Straits Exchange Foundation and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, the legislators said Chingchuankang Airport had only been allotted five of those flights.
Responding to Lin’s requests, Lee said the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) had created a blueprint to build a terminal for larger airplanes and international flights at Chingchuankang Airport with the aim of serving 1.35 million passengers per year.
Under the project, the central government will earmark NT$3.9 billion (US$118.9 million) to build an international terminal at the airport.
Construction of the facility is scheduled to be completed by 2012, Lee said.
The CEPD plans to turn Chingchuankang Airport into a regional hub serving passenger flights and cross-strait routes.
It projected that the airport could serve at least 3.5 million passengers per year in the long term, Lee said.
Although Shanghai is one popular Chinese destination among Taiwanese carriers, Lee said earlier this week that none had applied to ply the Taichung-Shanghai route because the runways at Chingchuankang Airport can only accommodate smaller planes with a seat capacity of around 100 passengers.
Lee said that the CAA had asked Taiwanese carriers including China Airlines, EVA Airways and TransAsia Airways, all of which fly to Shanghai from either Taipei or Kaohsiung, to offer one flight per week each from Chingchuankang Airport to Shanghai.
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