First weekend charter flight takes off with mainland tourists

BEIJING, July 4 (Xinhua) -- The first cross-Strait weekend charter flight from China's mainland to Taiwan took off at 6:31 a.m. from Guangzhou, capital city of the southern Guangdong Province early Friday morning.

More than 100 mainland tourists aboard the Airbus A330 became the first group of people on a sight-seeing tour allowed to Taiwan amid warming ties across the Taiwan Strait. The flight has 258 passengers.

The historic flight by China Southern Airlines (CSA) landed at Taipei Taoyuan Airport in Taiwan at 8:10 a.m. after a 1,124-km journey.

"I have been expecting to visit Taiwan, the Treasure Island, and my dream will finally come true today," mainland tourist Shi Anwei told Xinhua before boarding the plane. "I was too excited to sleep last night."

Following suit was a flight from Xiamen of eastern Fujian Province that took off at 7:16 a.m. The flight, MF881 by the Xiamen Airlines with 203 passengers, arrived at the Songshan Airport of Taipei at 8:44 a.m.

Dim sum was laid on especially, with a local Fujian flavor. Airhostesses, dressed in traditional Chinese clothing of qipao, staged a self-made local dance performance during the flight.

Each passenger witnessing the historic moment received a gift from the airline of a model plane and map of Taiwan.

At a separate ceremony in East China's Nanjing City marking the city as the fifth new city to conduct cross-Strait charter flights, Zheng Lizhong, mainland-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) executive vice chairman, said the start of the weekend charter flight and beginning of the mainland tourists' visit to Taiwan "is destined to open a new chapter in cross-Strait cultural and economic communications."

Xia Xinghua, director of the east China bureau of Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), said that since Shanghai was chosen as the first city for cross-Strait flight operation five years ago, "there has been a small step each year, but they have amounted to a major step in the past five years."

"The ever more frequent and convenient flights across the Strait are not only an improved means of transportation, they are also an emotional and cultural bridge for the people, and have changed the way of thinking of both sides," Xia said.

However, he noted that real direct flight hadn't been realized yet as all of the planes flew to Taipei by way of Hong Kong airspace.

Quoting Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the great pioneer of Chinese democratic revolution, the official said, "the real success is still in front and we need to work harder."

The first charter flight from Nanjing started at 8:05 a.m.

In Beijing, the first weekend charter flight, CA 185, took off at about 8:30 a.m., after a brief ceremony attended by mainland's Taiwan affairs chief Wang Yi, director of CAAC head Li Jiaxiang, and director of the National Tourism Administration Shao Qiwei.

"Regular flights across the Taiwan Strait would definitely boost the civil aviation market in the Asia-Pacific region and even the world," said Yang Guoqing, deputy head of CAAC.

Twenty minutes later, the last flight, the one from Shanghai, departed from Pudong International Airport.

Some 760 Chinese mainland tourists from Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Xiamen and Guangzhou took the first weekend charter flights to Taiwan on Friday, three weeks after the mainland's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait and the Taiwan-based Straits Exchange Foundation met last month.