Loong Air Just Opened Its First Cross-Strait Route—Chengdu to Taichung

On Tuesday, July 28, 2026, Zhejiang’s Loong Air put Chengdu Tianfu International Airport and Taichung International Airport on the same ticket twice a week. The airline’s own framing, carried by Focus Taiwan and CNA, calls it Loong Air’s first direct cross-strait service. The operating days are Tuesdays and Saturdays, enough to plan around, not enough to treat as a shuttle.

The clock is what travelers will actually use. GJ8301 leaves Chengdu Tianfu at 11:10 a.m. and arrives in Taichung at 2:25 p.m. The turn, GJ8302, departs Taichung at 3:25 p.m. and reaches Tianfu at 7:00 p.m. AeroRoutes lists Airbus A320 family metal on the launch pattern. Treat those times as published airline schedules; live days still move with ATC, weather, and slot reality.

Taichung’s map context keeps the story honest. The Taichung Tourism and Travel Bureau, via CNA, says the airport now lists about thirty-one operating or announced routes, including twenty regular services and eleven charter routes. Chengdu is one of three scheduled cross-strait links currently serving Taichung, beside Nanjing and Qingdao. That is mid-island choice architecture: central Taiwan travelers who already sleep in Taichung, visit family in Changhua or Nantou, or stage a west-coast loop no longer need every western-China trip to clear through Taoyuan first.

The inaugural ceremony drew the usual civic cast: Loong Air vice president Wang Yuguo, Taichung Airport director Zhang Ruishu, and tourism bureau secretary-general Liao Weizhi among those present, per CNA’s Chinese-language report. Wang called the route a new departure for the airline and a responsibility to connect Tianfu with central Taiwan. The bureau pitched summer travelers on more diverse leisure options in peak season and pointed to Taiwan Tourist Shuttle 555, framed as about thirty minutes from the airport into the city. Treat that bus as a planning hint, not a guarantee for every bag and every traffic day.

What this is not: a sudden reopening of every suspended mainland city pair, a daily frequency story, or a substitute for Taipei’s denser mainland and international web. The so-what here is geographic. Chengdu is a western China hub with its own leisure and business pull; Taichung is the mid-island airport that already sells night markets, cycling, and a shorter hop to the west coast. Book Loong Air when those two cities are your actual ends, and book Nanjing or Qingdao when those cities are. Permits and entry rules for cross-strait travel remain traveler homework that sits beside the ticket, not something an airline ribbon-cutting erases.

What to watch next is operational and small: whether Tuesday and Saturday loads justify a third weekly day, whether Taichung’s announced-route count keeps converting into seats you can actually buy, and whether competing coastal gateways still win travelers who prefer a transfer when fares or timings beat the nonstop. Check the live Loong Air and airport pages before you treat an inaugural timetable as forever.

The useful change is a western-China city pair on a mid-island airport, not a rewrite of the whole cross-strait map. Consider Chengdu–Taichung when your itinerary already lives in central Taiwan or Sichuan, treat twice weekly as a calendar you plan around, and watch the August booking window as the first honest test of whether the route earns its second season.