The Junyao Group, a privately-owned Chinese conglomerate involved in aviation, dairy and real estate, has got the green-light to set up a new airline, company authority said in Shanghai on Friday. 

Junyao, a Shanghai-based company that has total assets of some 3.5 billion yuan (US$420 million), got the official approval from the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China (CAAC) on Thursday to run regular scheduled flights. 

It was the fifth private air company China's air service regulator has so far approved.

The new airline company has a registered capital of 150 million yuan (US$18 million), which shared by the Junyao Group and the Three Gorges Aviation and Tourism Investment Co.Ltd. Junyao will own a 53.33 percent-stake in the Eastern Express Airlines Co.

The Eastern Express will be based at Shanghai's Pudong or Hongqiao international airport to provide regular passenger, cargo and express mail services as well as chartered flights and aircraft maintenance services.

Preparatory work for the new company will last from now to June 2007, said sources with the Junyao Group.

Junyao Group, originally set up by Wang Junyao, a high-profile entrepreneur who died of cancer in November 2004 at 38, was the first operator of privately-owned chartered flights in China.

Junyao began offering chartered flights from Changsha in central China's Hunan Province to Zhejiang's Wenzhou City in 1991. It also owns an 18 percent-stake in Wuhan Airlines, a regional airline controlled by China Eastern Airlines.

(Xinhua News Agency July 1, 2005)