Aviation impasse must be resolved

For a while, it seemed as though Taipei and Beijing were able to overcome just about anything as long as they sidestepped sensitive political issues and focused on practical matters involved with boosting economic, cultural and tourism exchanges.

　But inevitably, the warm atmosphere across the Taiwan Strait has finally started to cool and problems are cropping up.

The latest problem to emerge could cause severe harm to the warming atmosphere of cross-strait relations by inconveniencing cross-strait travelers, including businesspeople and tourists who have been driving our economic recovery.

According to the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, an impasse over the wording of a recent agreement aimed at increasing the frequency of cross-strait flights might result in cancellation of several new flight services between points in Taiwan and mainland China.

Both sides agree that the agreement signed in May would increase the number of weekly cross-strait flights from 270 to 370.

　But Beijing insists that Taipei promised that at least 20 of these weekly flight services would connect points in Taiwan with Fuzhou and Xiamen, the two major airports serving Fujian province directly across the Taiwan Strait.

The Ministry of Transportation and Communications here has said that it believed the minimum of 20 flights to Fuzhou and Xiamen would be taken out of all 370 weekly flights, rather than the 100 new flight services.

When our side asked Beijing to open talks on this sticking point, it indicated it preferred to wait until the next scheduled round of negotiations in October rather than meeting immediately to resolve the impasse.

If something cannot be done to resolve this question before both sides meet in October, several new flight services that recently just opened, as well as new services expected to start soon, will be canceled, causing major headaches for cross-strait travelers.

The cancellations would be most common for cities like Taichung and Kaohsiung, which have recently benefited from newly opened cross-strait flights that have brought about great convenience for businesspeople traveling from these areas.

　Both sides would be wise to quietly get the aviation discussions rolling again before flights have to start being canceled.

Our side has complained that while Beijing has been open to permitting requests to open new services to points ranging from Beijing to Zhengzhou, the mainland side has tried to make Taiwanese airlines use unpopular time slots such as early mornings and the middle of the night, rather than times that would be widely used by travelers on both sides.

1|2|Next Page>>

SharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Terms

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos
 Respond to this email