A Mandarin Airlines flight will leave Taipei for Shanghai at 7:30 am today, the first of a series of cross-Straits charter flights laid on for the Dragon Boat Festival, which falls on Sunday.
The flight is scheduled to arrive at Pudong International Airport at 10:10 am. An hour later, it will return to Taipei's Taoyuan Airport.
Passengers flying between Taiwan and the mainland had to travel via Hong Kong or Macao during the non-festival days.
All tickets for the flights have sold out, Taiwan's Mandarin Airlines said on its website yesterday.
Six other carriers - Shanghai Airlines and China Eastern Airlines from the mainland, and Taiwan's Uni Air, TransAsia Airways, China Airlines and Eva Airways - will between them fly about 6,000 passengers on 13 round trips between the two cities.
China Eastern said it has sold all of its round trip tickets, and 75 percent of tickets from Shanghai to Taipei.
Chu Ping-cheng, a clerk from Taiwan who works in Shanghai, told China Daily he would not be going home for the festival, as "the holiday is too short".
But he said he was looking forward to direct flights across the Taiwan Straits becoming a daily service.
"There are lots of people from Taiwan working on the mainland, I often see my friends from home in Shanghai."
The mainland-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits - the main channel for talks with the island - is expected to hold a meeting with its Taiwan counterpart, the Straits Exchange Foundation, this month.
Weekend cross-Straits charter flights is said to be high on the agenda.
Ma Ying-jeou, who was sworn in as Taiwan leader last month, has proposed starting regular direct weekend charter flights as early as July this year.
Source: China Daily
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