BEIJING - Chinese mainland and Taiwan have agreed to have more cross-Strait flights during the upcoming Spring Festival period, a statement from the mainland-based Cross-Straits Aviation Transport Exchange Council said Thursday.

The council reached the agreement with the Taipei Airlines Association (TAA) after negotiations on Tuesday and Wednesday.

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The Spring Festival celebrates the Chinese lunar New Year.

The extra flights will be from January 20 until February 17, 2011 from cities including Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing, Guangzhou and Nanjing.

At present, there are 370 regular flights across the Taiwan Strait every week.

To facilitate people's transportation, the two sides also agreed to open another four mainland airports -- Xuzhou, Wuxi, Quanzhou and Sanya -- to cross-Straits flights. They will open for cross-Straits charter flights as early as next year's Spring Festival.

Applications from airlines on both sides of the Straits to add regular flights and charter flights during the Spring Festival period will be dealt with before January 10, in order to allow passengers to fix their flight arrangements at an early date, the statement said.