The maiden flight of China's first privately run airline, Okay Airways, began at 9:00 AM on Friday, taking off from the company's flight operations base at Binhai International Airport in Tianjin.

Carrying a total of 76 passengers, a 189-seat Boeing 737-900 leased from Korea Airlines was bound for Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province, via Changsha, capital of Hunan Province in central China.

The company had hoped to launch its first flight last Saturday but was unable to get the necessary paperwork from the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China (CAAC) in time, said company president Liu Jieyin.

The cost of the flight from Tianjin to Changsha was 650 yuan (US$79) and from Tianjin to Kunming 680 yuan (US$82), according to the Okay Airways airport travel service desk. A Tianjin travel agency indicated that both fares were discounted about 40 percent from the normal prices.

The airline, funded by private investors from Beijing and Shenzhen, is following a low-cost strategy to engage in air cargo and express services, as well as passenger charter and ground distribution services.

China's aviation industry has grown faster than the economy as a whole, but the civil aviation sector was off limits to private investment until the State Council recently opened the doors.

Shortly after Okay Airways got the go-ahead, the CAAC gave the nod to three other private investors to set up airlines: Spring International, based in Shanghai; Eagle, out of Chengdu; and Huaxia, in Gansu Province.

(Xinhua News Agency, China Daily March 11, 2005)