STAR-BULLETIN / 2002
While airline capacity to Hawaii from the mainland is up this year, seats from Japan are down.
Visas block China flights
But the overall number
of airline seats to Hawaii
is up 13.4% this year
China Eastern Airlines is ready to start the first direct service from China to Hawaii, a direct run every four days from Shanghai to Honolulu.
However, the airline has not begun the service because it can't be sure that U.S. entry visas will be issued for enough Chinese to make the trip an economic success, Tony Vericella, president and chief executive of the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau, said yesterday.
Vericella, chairing a committee on airlift for the Governor's Tourism Summit, gave that as one example of the difficulties Hawaii has in developing certain visitor markets.
While the two-hour committee meeting in the Hawaii Convention Center spent some time on the decades-old question of whether a lack of airline seats keeps tourists from coming to Hawaii or whether the lack of tourists keeps airlines from providing seats, a consensus emerged.
Representatives of the airline industry, airport concessions and tourism promotion organizations agreed that there has to be cooperation among all of them to attract visitors and make their airport arrivals and departures as comfortable and welcoming as possible.
Ron Wright, vice chairman of the Hawaii Tourism Authority and head of Continental Airlines' operations in Hawaii, said demand for airline seats is fragile and easily affected by events such as 9/11, but Hawaii has shown resilience and leisure travel has grown.
HVCB figures presented at the meeting show that airline seats into Hawaii in the first quarter of this year were up 13.4 percent from the first quarter of 2002, while seats from the U.S. West area were up 14.4 percent year over year.
However, seats from Japan were down 17 percent. That was all a function of demand, participants in the meeting said.
One factor that does help Hawaii is airline mileage programs, said attorney Jeff Watanabe, who represents the 19 airlines that are signatories to an agreement with the state that airlines must join with airport concession operators to cover the cost of operating Hawaii's 15 commercial airports.
For any airline that has a mileage program, Hawaii is the most-served market, Watanabe said.
One of the problems in relations with the airport system, Watanabe and others said, is that airlines that share the cost for the entire airport system may use only one or two airports.
The increase in direct flights from the mainland to neighbor island destinations creates some real problems, Wright said. Counties want to have international airports with longer runways and better facilities, adding to the total expenses of the airport system, he said.
Rep. Galen Fox (R, Waikiki) said one of the documents presented to committee members shows that Japan is the only area of Asia that is well-served by airlines while China, Korea and other markets are under-served.
Wright said there is plenty of demand, plenty of people with enough money and time to come to Hawaii from China and elsewhere but "you have to unlock demand." That means getting more visitor visas approved.
China Eastern executives have visited Hawaii, Vericella said. The state Department of Transportation has offered the airline reduced landing fees for a startup period, he said, but the airline can't be sure it will get enough visas approved in a timely manner to justify the charter flights, he said.
"They don't want to lose money, is basically the issue," he said.
