China Southern Airlines Company Limited  Chairman Liu Shaoyong is going to operate the first weekend chartered flight in an Airbus A330 aircraft from the Chinese Mainland to the Taiwan Island on July 4, 2008.

The flight, numbered CZ3097, will take off from Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport at 6:30 am and land at Taipei at 8:10 pm.

Tourists from the mainland and Taiwan will start traveling between the two sides by the chartered flights on July 18.

The General Administration of Civil Aviation of China approved six mainland airlines and five Taiwan airlines on June 24 to run the weekend chartered flights. The six mainland airlines include Air China, China Eastern, China Southern, Hainan Airlines, Xiamen Airlines and Shanghai Airlines; the five airlines in Taiwan are Mandarin Airlines, Transasia Airways, UNI Airways, China Airlines, and Eva Airways.

18 flights will be operated on July 4 between Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xiamen and Nanjing in the mainland and Taipei, Taizhong, Kaohsiung, Hualian and Penghu in Taiwan.