Between January 29 and February 7, eleven charter flights between Shanghai and Taiwan carried 343 passengers to the Chinese mainland and 2,336 passengers to the island province, according to aviation authorities.

The flights have now been suspended for the weeklong Spring Festival, or Chinese Lunar New Year, holiday and will resume on February 13.

Monday's flights were operated by Taiwan-based Trans Asia Airways, Eva Air, Far Eastern Air Transport Co. and UNI Air and the mainland's Shanghai Airlines. They carried 901 passengers to the island province and 317 to Shanghai.

Mainland and Taiwan civil aviation professionals reached consensus on the flights earlier last month in Macao. They agreed to run them from January 29 to February 20 between the mainland cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou and Taiwan's Taipei and Kaohsiung.

The non-stop charter flight services were exclusively arranged for Taiwan business people working on the mainland to return home for Spring Festival, which is on February 9 this year.

It is estimated that there are more than 700,000 Taiwan people working on the mainland and living there for most of the year.

(Xinhua News Agency February 8, 2005)