Airlines seek weekday cross-Strait flights after weekend success

Source: Xinhua | 08-06-2008 10:06

TAIPEI, Aug. 5 (Xinhua) -- As weekend charter flights linking Chinese mainland and Taiwan reach the one-month mark, airlines on both sides of the Taiwan Straits want to offer the service on weekdays.

"Judging from the one-month results, the weekend charter flights are indeed widely welcomed by people on both sides of the Straits," Nieh Kuo-wei, vice general manager of Taiwan-based EVA Air, told Xinhua here on Tuesday. "We wish for more flights and destinations, as well as weekday flights to provide more choices for passengers."

The cross-Strait weekend charter flights kicked off on July 4 under an agreement signed by the mainland-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits and the Taiwan-based Straits Exchange Foundation.

According to the island's aviation authority, during the four weekends since, 144 round-trip flights, carrying some 53,000 passengers, were made. The average load factor was 87 percent.

Nieh said EVA's weekend flights carried more than 10,000 passengers and the average load factor was above 85 percent.