...is part of a cross-strait agreement signed June 8 to increase the number of direct flights from 370 to 558 per week, with each side offering 94 extra flightsTaipei (ANTARA News) - China Airlines (CAL), Taiwan's major carrier, will add two more Chinese cities to its China destination list in September at the earliest, the airline said Wednesday.
CAL, according CNA, will serve Yancheng in Jiangsu Province and Sanya in Hainan Province with two scheduled flights to each city, the airline said.
Meanwhile, Eva Air, Taiwan's other main carrier, said it is still working on a service expansion to Yancheng but intends to have one direct flight to the city each week.
Yancheng is adjacent to Shanghai and can make up for the shortage in services to Shanghai, where demand exceeds supply, CAL officials said.
However, they went on, the new flights will not be able to rely solely on Taiwanese business persons traveling across the Taiwan Strait and the company will have to attract more Chinese tourists from these cities to Taiwan.
The local airlines will use smaller carriers, like the Boeing 737-800, for the new flights in the early stages, CAL said.
The addition is part of a cross-strait agreement signed June 8 to increase the number of direct flights from 370 to 558 per week, with each side offering 94 extra flights.
Taiwan's Civil Aeronautics Administration Director-General Yin Chen-pong had said July 13 that further additional flights agreed upon in the June 8 agreement to meet increasing demand will not be able to start before the end of October.
Yancheng is a prefecture-level city with the second-largest population in the province. As of the end of 2010, the city had approved 748 investment cases from Taiwanese companies and had more than 700 Taiwanese businesses registered in the city.
There are more than 100,000 Taiwanese people living in Yancheng, while over 30,000 Yancheng people visited Taiwan in tour groups last year.
(ANT)
Editor: Ade P Marboen
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