China's Change to Flight Path in Sensitive Taiwan Strait Raises Safety Concerns

Move challenges Taipei's ability to manage its airspace and poses risks to civil aviation

- Yip Wai Yee

TAIPEI - China's unilateral move to open a third extension of the M503 air route in the sensitive Taiwan Strait raises safety concerns and challenges Taipei's ability to manage its airspace, analysts said.

The M503 flight path lies just 4.2 nautical miles, or around 7.8km, west of the so-called median line, an unofficial demarcation that for years had served as an informal boundary between China and Taiwan. But Beijing, which claims Taiwan as its territory, has increasingly made incursions across the line as it pressures Taipei to accept its sovereignty claims.

Beijing's latest move to adjust the flight path without prior negotiation with Taipei poses a threat to flight safety, experts said.

"If an aircraft were to deviate from the path due to weather or mechanical issues, Taiwan's air traffic controllers would have only about 30 seconds to respond," said Dr Su Tzu-yun, a defence analyst at Taiwan's Institute for National Defence and Security Research. "This poses a risk to civilian aviation on both sides (of the strait)."

The new extension covers an area near Taiwan's outlying Matsu Islands, where Taiwanese holidaymakers fly to for weekend getaways.

On July 6, Beijing announced that it had activated the W121 extension connecting Dongshan in China's Zhejiang province to M503, a north-to-south air route that goes through the Taiwan Strait. It is the third extension after Beijing in 2024 opened W122 and W123 - west-to-east flight paths from the Chinese coastal cities of Xiamen and Fuzhou.