Hong Kong airlines will soon gain more access to the lucrative Shanghai and Beijing markets, but liberalisation of the aviation regime with the Mainland is expected to fall several items short of Cathay Pacific Airways' wish list, say officials close to ongoing air service negotiations.

The new deal, agreed in principle at the last round of talks earlier this month, will give Cathay its long-awaited return to Shanghai after more than a decade on the sidelines. But it will only offer a small rise in flights to China's first-tier airports in favour of awarding Hong Kong carriers more access to secondary facilities that probably rank outside the Mainland's top 10 for passenger volumes.

"We will gradually open the skies to most of China's airports next year," said He Jinri, a deputy director-general with the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China. "As for the first-tier airports, it is not going to happen until 2008, since the infrastructure cannot offer enough time slots (at the airports)."