Midnight Wednesday saw the executives of the Shenzhen subsidiary of China Southern Airlines (CSA) greet its crews who had finished work on the last day of 2003 at Shezhen Bao'ao International Airport.

The gesture meant that the CSA sub-company's accident record for 2003 was zero.

"The company has realized a perfect safety year," said a company source, who added that a total of 19,861 flights were flown by the company in 2003.

The total flying time was 35,243 hours, the distance covered was more than 24 million kilometers, and 3.9 million passengers were carried.

CSA's Shenzhen subsidiary is the largest passenger operator in the local market. It also operates international cargo flights, such as ones to Chicago, Illinois and Los Angeles, California in the United States.

The company source said Thursday that its scheduled cargo flights to the two cities would remain normal despite recent flight restrictions over several major US cities, including Chicago.

(Shenzhen Daily January 2, 2004)