page_title: China Airlines
section_title: Formation and early years (1959–1970)
hierarchical_section_title: China Airlines / History / Formation and early years (1959–1970)
caption_attribution_description: Boeing 727-109C B-1822 of China Airlines at Singapore Airport in 1974
context_page_description: China Airlines is the state-owned national carrier of the Republic of China, and one of its two major airlines along with EVA Air. It is headquartered in Taipei Taoyuan International Airport and operates over 1400 flights weekly to 102 cities across Asia, Europe, North America, and Oceania. Carrying over 19 million passengers and 5700 tons of cargo in 2017, the carrier was the 33rd largest airline in the world in terms of revenue passenger kilometers and 10th largest in terms of freight revenue ton kilometers.
  China Airlines is owned by Taiwan-based China Airlines Group and operates the China Airlines Cargo, a member of SkyTeam Cargo, which operates a fleet of freighter aircraft and manages its parent airline's cargo-hold capacity. Its sister airlines include Mandarin Airlines which operates flights to domestic and low-demand regional destinations, and Tigerair Taiwan which is a low-cost carrier established by China Airlines and Singaporean airline group Tigerair Holdings but is now wholly owned by China Airlines Group. The company slogan is Journey with a caring smile.
context_section_description: With a fleet of two PBY Amphibians, China Airlines was established on 16 December 1959, with its shares completely held by the Republic of China government. It was founded by a retired air force officer and initially concentrated on charter flights. During the 1960s, China Airlines was able to establish its first scheduled routes. In October 1962, a flight from Taipei to Hualien became the airline's first domestic service. Later, with the introduction of Caravelle and Boeing 727-100s, the airlines introduced international flights to South Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Japan. With the airlines' first two Boeing 707 aircraft, trans-Pacific flights to San Francisco via Tokyo were initiated on 2 February 1970. The expansion of the company's 707 fleet also permitted more services in Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, and North America (via Japan and Hawaii).
caption: China Airlines Boeing 727-109C at Singapore International Airport in 1974.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "4800", "Image YResolution": "4800", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 7.0 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2013:11:08 19:52:09", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "184", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "422", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5891", "EXIF ExifVersion": "[0, 2, 2, 0]", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2013:10:30 15:05:54", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2013:10:30 15:05:54", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "[0, 1, 0, 0]", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1024", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "707"}