SHANGHAI -- An Airbus 330-300 left Shanghai for Taipei Saturday, carrying 278 passengers bound to China's island province of Taiwan to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival which is about a week away.

The charter flight took off from Shanghai's Pudong International Airport at 9:30 a.m. and was scheduled to arrive in Taipei at 12:30 a.m., said a spokesperson of Shanghai-based China Eastern Airlines, the operator of the charter flight service.

Most of the passengers were Taiwan businessmen working on the mainland and were flying home to celebrate the traditional Chinese holiday for family reunion, he said.

The airline company has also prepared a special gift for each passenger: a pack of mooncakes, the traditional dim sum that resembles the full moon in shape and is eaten on Mid-Autumn Festival when the whole family get together to enjoy the full moon.

The holiday falls on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month. This year it will be celebrated on October 6, toward the end of the week-long National Day holidays.

The return flight will leave Taipei on October 7.

The first Mid-Autumn Festival charter flight across the Taiwan Straits, an Eva Airways' flight, arrived in Shanghai from Taipei at 13:25 Friday. It marks the extension of the cross-Strait charter flight service, which was formerly restricted to the Spring Festival, or the Chinese Lunar New Year.

Six airlines from each side of the Taiwan Straits will operate 24 round-trip flights between Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xiamen and Taipei from September 29 to October 8.