Hundreds of mainland tourists arrived in Taiwan on chartered flights yesterday for the first time in almost six decades. The inaugural weekend chartered flights marked a historic step toward warming relations across the Taiwan Strait.

The first flight was by a China Southern Airlines plane, which took off from Guangzhou City at 6:31am with 256 passengers aboard. Carrier chairman Liu Shaoyong captained the Airbus A330 jet to touch down at Taoyuan International Airport in northern Taiwan at 8:10am.

Shanghai Airlines sent the city's first weekend chartered flight to Taiwan at 8:50am with 159 passengers and it reached Songshan Airport at 11:50am. The airline provided Taiwan-style food during the trip.

Alex Lee, the new director of the Shanghai Association of Taiwan Businessmen Invested Enterprises, was the first check-in passenger for the flight.

"I am looking forward to real direct flights between the mainland and Taiwan which can save time, fuel costs and personal expenses," Lee said.

The mainland and Taiwan will discuss direct flights across the Strait "as soon as possible" but before that all chartered flights will have to fly over Hong Kong.

"The mainland has prepared for real direct flights and we have set up preparation offices in Taiwan," said Fan Hongxi, president of Shanghai Airlines.

"It will only take just over anhour to fly from Shanghai to Taiwan without a detour in Hong Kong, and the ticket price will be lowered at that time," Fan said.

Yesterday's flights carried 760 tourists from five cities of the mainland - Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Xiamen and Nanjing - on 10-day package tours.

Shen Qiren, a 76-year-old Shanghai native, yesterday took a flight at 2pm from Pudong International Airport to Taiwan on a trip he described may be his last chance to see his foster mother.

"She raised me until I was about 12 and then she went to Taiwan ... I haven't seen her since," he said. "I signed up for the tour group as soon as I learnt about the opening-up of Taiwan-bound tourism."

Smiling mainland visitors like Shen were greeted by groups of reporters, local officials and crowds, traditional dragon dances and light sprays of water from fire trucks when they walked through an arch made of colorful balloons at Taipei Taoyuan Airport.

The flights were "a new start in the history of exchanges between the two sides," Wang Yi, director of the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office, said in Beijing yesterday morning.

"At present, cross-Taiwan Strait relations are facing a rare opportunity for development," Wang said at the ceremony before the departure of an Air China flight with 294 passengers bound for Taiwan.

A deal signed between the mainland and Taiwan last month has paved the way for as many as 3,000 mainland travelers to visit the island every day.

The agreement includes 36 return flights each Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Six mainland-based airlines and five from Taiwan are conducting the flights.

The first flight from Taiwan to the mainland, run by Uni Air, took off from Taipei Songshan Airport at 8am with 149 passengers.

Apart from special holidays, there have been no regular direct flights across the Taiwan Strait since 1949.