Chinese mainland and Taiwan have agreed to have more cross-Straits flights during next year's Spring Festival period, a statement from the mainland-based Cross-Strait Aviation Transport Exchange Council said Thursday.

The council reached the agreement with the Taipei Airlines Association (TAA) after negotiations on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The Spring Festival celebrates the Chinese lunar New Year.

The extra flights will be from Jan. 20 until Feb. 17, 2011 from cities including Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing, Guangzhou and Nanjing.

At present, there are 370 regular flights across the Taiwan Straits every week.

To facilitate people's transportation, the two sides also agreed to open another four mainland airports -- Xuzhou, Wuxi, Quanzhou and Sanya -- to cross-Straits flights. They will open for cross-Strait charter flights as early as next year's Spring Festival.

Applications from airlines on both sides of the Straits to add regular flights and charter flights during the Spring Festival period will be dealt with before Jan. 10, in order to allow passengers to fix their flight arrangements at an early date, the statement said.

Related

• Airlines look to expand direct flights between mainland, Taiwan
• Launch ceremony of regular cross-Straits flights cancelled
• Taiwan to increase mainland flights
• Fuzhou launches third route to Taiwan
• Direct cargo flights connect Taiwan and Jiangxi

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