Regular non-stop passenger flights between China and rival Taiwan have begun, nearly 60 years after the two sides split following a civil war.

The first flight to China was a China Airlines service from Taipei’s Taoyuan airport to Shanghai, while the first to Taiwan was a China Southern Airlines service from Guangzhou to Taipei Taoyuan.

From today six Chinese airlines and five Taiwanese airlines will be operating regularly between the two sides, with flights permitted from Friday through Monday each week.

Today’s launch of regular flights follows a groundbreaking agreement that was reached last month. Regular non-stop flights had been banned since 1949, when the two sides split following a civil war, forcing passengers to travel between the two sides via a third point, normally Hong Kong or Macau.

Under the agreemen

This entry was posted on Friday, July 4th, 2008 at 11:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.