Delta, Continental
get isle-Japan routes

The flights are a first for
Delta and a major increase
for Continental

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Continental Airlines will add five flights a week to its Tokyo-Honolulu service in December and Delta Air Lines will get its first Tokyo-Honolulu service with six flights a week, under new authorizations by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Continental, whose Japan license is in the name of its Continental Micronesia unit, now has one Boeing 747 flight a day from Tokyo's Narita International Airport to Honolulu.

Ron Wright, the airline's Hawaii marketing and sales director, said the additional flights will use 425-seat 747s. That will open up an additional 110,500 seats to Hawaii.

Delta said it has not yet worked out details of the aircraft it will use or the seat capacity. Six flights a week, however, normally would mean about 100,000 seats a year.

Hawaii already is a significant market for Houston-based Continental and will get added service when the airline begins its daily nonstop Newark-Honolulu service June 11.

Delta is also an important mainland-Hawaii operator that until now has had no service beyond Hawaii. Details of its planned Honolulu-Japan service were not immediately available.

Both airlines won the added routes as a result of a new U.S.-Japan aviation agreement worked out earlier this year.

The two carriers also won a number of mainland-Japan route approvals. Continental will start daily Boeing 777 nonstop service from Newark to Tokyo on Nov. 30 and daily 777 direct service between Houston and Tokyo on Dec. 30, subject to the approval of the Japanese government.

Delta won U.S. approval for daily service between Tokyo and Atlanta, Tokyo-Portland, Osaka-Portland and Fukuoka-Portland.

Also, AMR Corp.'s American Airlines was approved for daily Tokyo-Chicago, Tokyo-New York and Tokyo-Boston flights and a daily service from Osaka to its Dallas/Fort Worth hub.

The approvals are seen as creating significant competition for the existing U.S. carriers on the Japan-U.S. routes, Northwest Airlines and UAL Corp.'s United Airlines.

The government also approved Japan-U.S. code-sharing agreements between Continental and Northwest and another between Delta and Trans World Airlines.