As of Saturday, only 400 of 1,600 seats on 16 chartered flights had been booked.

"It's too late for us to sell tickets. Many passengers have already booked tickets and went the usual way - changing flights in Hong Kong or Macau," said an official with one of the Taiwan-based air carriers.

Taiwan authorities ban direct flights between the island and China's mainland. The holiday charters won't fly direct either, but they will only stop in Hong Kong or Macau for about 40 minutes, and passengers won't have to change planes. Total flying time will be about an hour or two shorter than traditional flights, and tickets will be cheaper as well.

Zhang Zhiqun, director of the Shanghai Taiwan Affairs Office, predicted that even-tually, more than 1,000 passengers will take the chartered flights to fly back to Taiwan for the Chinese New Year, which falls on February 1 this year.

The airlines only began selling tickets for the flights on January 8, due to delays in getting approval from authorities in Taiwan.

Altogether there are about 500,000 Taiwanese people working and living in Shang-hai and its neighboring cities, according to Xie Lijun, secretary general of the Shanghai Association of Taiwan Businessmen Invested Enterprises.

But the majority of them had booked flights long before January 8.

They usually book tickets two months before the departure in case tickets are sold out, said industry officials.

"Our potential customers are those who failed to book tickets earlier and those who hadn't planned to return but are attracted by our price," said the Taiwan airline com-pany official.

While an economy ticket for a chartered flight costs at least several hundred yuan less than traditional flights, many potential customers have been turned off by a lack of flexibility.

"I have to return to Shang-hai on a fixed date after the Spring Festival if I take a chartered flight, which will be an inconvenience," said a young woman surnamed Huang.

"This is absolutely not necessary," said Xia Xinghua, a Civil Aviation Admini-stration of China official.

"For the interests of airlines and Taiwan passen-gers, we have been pushing for direct flights with sincerity, but were turned down (by the Taiwan authorities)," said Xia.

While the airlines expect to lose money, Zhang said they are all keen on the flights as they hope to benefit from possible real direct flights across the Taiwan Straits.

(eastday.com January 13, 2003)