Tainan Mayor William Lai has received the green light for international flights at the Tainan Airport. After an inspection visit, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications has decided that

international chartered flights can be made available this May at the earliest, and passengers may soon be able to fly directly from Tainan to China.

Tainan City and County upgraded and merged into a special municipality.

Therefore, the local government intends to upgrade the airport as well.

Ministry of Transportation and Communications officials paid an inspection visit to the airport's immigration, custom, quarantine facilities, arrival and departure hall, and gave the airport a green light.

So in as soon as May, the airport can operate international chartered flights.

However, since the opening of the Taiwan High-speed Rail System, the airport only has 5 services to Makong and Kinmen each on a daily basis and is often empty.

Tainan Mayor William Lai hopes the airport can satisfy the needs of people in Yunlin, Jiayi and Tainan once it operates international flights.

Ministry of Transportation and Communications is also confident that the airport won't be idle.

Besides the services to other Asian destinations, the Tainan Airport is also trying to get cross-strait chartered flights, a highly anticipated move for Tainan travel industry players, who believe Tainan has a great tourism value.

But they wish to see responding measures too, so they can keep tourists around to explore the city.

Still, the Tainan Airport currently serves both civil and military flights.

It's quite difficult to move military flights away.

Besides, the immigration and quarantine officers are borrowed from the Anping harbor.

So the scale of the airport is way smaller than Taoyuan, Xiaokang and even Sungshan airport.

The biggest challenge should be the passenger source, since that is the key to the airport's survival.