Taiwan confirms China has asked for more cross-strait flights

Taipei, April 16 (CNA) Taiwanese authorities on Thursday confirmed they had received a message from the Chinese side calling for the "full normalization" of direct cross-strait passenger flights, but did not say when they would reply, as officials said existing services still have spare capacity.

"The Chinese side sent a letter on April 7 saying it hoped several destinations, including Urumqi and Xi'an, could be reopened," MAC deputy head and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a regular news briefing in Taipei.

As April 7 was the day Kuomintang (KMT) Chairperson Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) departed for her trip to China, Liang said Taiwanese authorities already knew by then that such proposals would be included in the 10 policy measures announced by China targeting Taiwan.

The 10 measures Liang referred to were announced on April 12 following Cheng's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on April 10.

Those measures included a proposal to "fully normalize" direct cross-strait passenger flights, including restoring flights between Taiwan and Chinese cities such as Urumqi, Xi'an, Harbin, Kunming and Lanzhou.

Those destinations were among the routes suspended when Taiwan first scaled back direct cross-strait passenger flights in February 2020 as part of its COVID-19 border control measures. Services have since only partially resumed on some other routes and remain well below pre-pandemic levels.

China pushes resumption

At a news briefing Wednesday, China's Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Chen Binhua (陳斌華) said there were currently around 300 flights between Taiwan and 15 destinations in 14 Chinese cities per week.

That is well below pre-2020 levels, when there were as many as 890 flights between Taiwan and 61 destinations in China.

Chen argued calls on both sides of the Taiwan Strait for the full resumption of direct cross-strait flight services were "strong," citing the more than 5.78 million travelers carried in 2025 and average load factors above 80 percent on current routes.

Chinese authorities have placed no policy restrictions on fully resuming direct cross-strait flights to all destinations, Chen said, urging Taiwan to remove what he called "unreasonable restrictions" and let airlines on both sides schedule flights based on market demand.

Taiwan says demand low

Cabinet spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told reporters Thursday that "actual demand" for direct cross-strait flights was not as high as some had imagined at this stage, adding that the relevant agencies would assess the matter "pragmatically."

Taiwan's Civil Aviation Administration (CAA) said there was capacity for 420 flights per week between Taiwan and 15 destinations in China, while only around 310 are actually in service, leaving spare capacity for additional flights if demand rises.

The CAA added that charter flights could also be applied for to 13 other destinations, including Xi'an, during holiday periods, but no carriers had submitted applications so far.

At the MAC briefing, Liang said Taiwanese authorities would respond "when there is a result," but when asked how long the evaluation might take, he said: "I can't give you a timeframe."