Direct flights between Taipei International Airport and Shanghai’s Hongqiao Airport will be officially launched before June 14, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said over the weekend.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) is scheduled to leave for Shanghai’s World Expo for an event hosted at the Taiwan Pavilion on that date.
Officials from the CAA and the Chinese Aviation Administration held talks in Taipei on Friday and Saturday.
Both sides also agreed to increase the total number of weekly passengers flights from 270 to 370 and to raise the number of weekly cargo flights from 28 to 48. Starting next month, each side will dispatch 185 passenger flights and 24 cargo flights per week.
Specifically, each side can offer 14 flights between Taipei International and Hongqiao. Meanwhile, both sides agreed to four more weekly flights to Beijing and Shenzhen. The other 20 flights added must be to either Xiamen or Fuzhou.
Apart from regular flights, both sides agreed to launch charter flights from Taichung, Hualien, Taitung and Makong (馬公), capping the total at 20 charter flights per month.
In addition to the Hongqiao flights, passenger flights will also be available to Shijiazhuang in Hebei Province from next month. Cargo flights will be available to Nanjing, Xiamen, Fuzhou and Chongqing as well. Carriers in Taiwan and China can also launch code sharing flights.
CAA Director-General Lee Long-wen (李龍文) said that he was dissatisfied with the results of the talks and that he had accepted the outcome only reluctantly, adding that a joint evaluation of the performance of cross-strait flights is scheduled for August, with further negotiations in October.
The results also fell short of the expectations of the nation’s carriers, who said before the talks that the number of passenger flights could be doubled to 540 flights a week.
While Lee said the increase in both passenger and cargo flights would help ease demand, some carriers said that it would not help lower ticket prices.
The only gain in the negotiations on this occasion was the cargo flights, Lee said, adding that initially China only agreed to include Nanjing, but was later persuaded to add Fuzhou, Xiamen and Chonging to the list.
There will be two weekly cargo flights to each of the new airports. Meanwhile, the number of cargo flights to Shanghai and Guangzhou have been increased from seven to eight per week.
Taipei and New Taipei City government officials are aiming to have the first phase of the Wanhua-Jungho-Shulin Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) line completed and opened by 2027, following the arrival of the first train set yesterday. The 22km-long Light Green Line would connect four densely populated districts in Taipei and New Taipei City: Wanhua (萬華), Jhonghe (中和), Tucheng (土城) and Shulin (樹林). The first phase of the project would connect Wanhua and Jhonghe districts, with Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and Chukuang (莒光) being the terminal stations. The two municipalities jointly hosted a ceremony for the first train to be used
MILITARY AID: Taiwan has received a first batch of US long-range tactical missiles ahead of schedule, with a second shipment expected to be delivered by 2026 The US’ early delivery of long-range tactical ballistic missiles to Taiwan last month carries political and strategic significance, a military source said yesterday. According to the Ministry of National Defense’s budget report, the batch of military hardware from the US, including 11 sets of M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and 64 MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems, had been scheduled to be delivered to Taiwan between the end of this year and the beginning of next year. However, the first batch arrived last month, earlier than scheduled, with the second batch —18 sets of HIMARS, 20 MGM-140 missiles and 864 M30
Representative to the US Alexander Yui delivered a letter from the government to US president-elect Donald Trump during a meeting with a former Trump administration official, CNN reported yesterday. Yui on Thursday met with former US national security adviser Robert O’Brien over a private lunch in Salt Lake City, Utah, with US Representative Chris Stewart, the Web site of the US cable news channel reported, citing three sources familiar with the matter. “During that lunch the letter was passed along, and then shared with Trump, two of the sources said,” CNN said. O’Brien declined to comment on the lunch, as did the Taipei
A woman who allegedly attacked a high-school student with a utility knife, injuring his face, on a Taipei metro train late on Friday has been transferred to prosecutors, police said yesterday. The incident occurred near MRT Xinpu Station at about 10:17pm on a Bannan Line train headed toward Dingpu, New Taipei City police said. Before police arrived at the station to arrest the suspect, a woman surnamed Wang (王) who is in her early 40s, she had already been subdued by four male passengers, one of whom was an off-duty Taipei police officer, police said. The student, 17, who sustained a cut about
RSS