The daily expansion could
By Russ Lynch
bring in more than 2,700 Japanese
tourists each week
Star-BulletinAll Nippon Airways Co. plans to expand its new twice-weekly, Tokyo-Honolulu service to daily flights in late October.
When that happens, ANA's 392-passenger Boeing 747 jumbo jets will be able to bring more than 2,700 Japanese tourists to Hawaii each week, a boost that is welcomed by the tourist industry at a time when Japanese travel to the islands is slipping.
To be sent off by a troupe of Hawaiian entertainers supplied by the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau and backed by an special advertising campaign in Japan, ANA will start its Tokyo-Honolulu service on Sunday. It will then fly Sundays and Wednesdays.
But ANA, Japan's biggest internal airline but second to Japan Airlines Co. in the global market, also has told the Japanese government it wants to shift to daily Honolulu service starting Oct. 25, with the launch of its winter schedule. Government approval is expected for the added five flights a week. ANA will continue to operate the daily Nagoya-Honolulu 747 service it began in February 1997.
Japan Airlines, which has been in the Hawaii market many more years than ANA and has more Hawaii flights, said it also has strong faith in this market.
Tony Vericella, president and chief executive of the HVCB, said ANA's new service is welcome. "That's a very positive thing for Hawaii, especially with some of the reductions that have occurred with other carriers. We have another partner to work with.
"We are helping them (ANA) and participating in their inaugural in Japan, doing a lot of promotion things for them and we know that their intention is to move the frequency of their service up as quickly as possible," he said.
Recently, UAL Corp.'s United Airlines and Northwest Airlines Corp., longtime carriers in the U.S.-Japan market, have shifted aircraft away from Hawaii in favor of mainland-Japan routes.
Continental Airlines Inc. earlier this year received Japanese approval to lift its Tokyo-Honolulu service to 12 flights a week from seven, and Delta Airlines Inc. got its first Tokyo-Honolulu route award, for six flights a week. The trouble is, they said, Tokyo hasn't yet found a way to fit in their landings at the crowded Narita Airport so the plans are on hold. So U.S. airlines are cutting back Japan-Hawaii business or holding the line while Japanese airlines seek to expand their share.
Hawaii is still the No. 1 destination for Japanese, attracting about 2 million Japanese tourists a year, and ANA wants its share, said Matsuo Egashira, a company spokesman in New York. "Tokyo is the biggest market in Japan, of course. We're very happy to have service from Tokyo," he said.
A big part of its Hawaii marketing has to do with ANA's frequent-flier plans, with benefits built up by the millions of Japanese who use the company's flights in Japan, he said.
"The Hawaii market is one of the best destinations for mileage-system frequent fliers," he said.
ANA flew three flights a week from Nagoya to Honolulu in the early 1990s but dropped out, partly because it couldn't get Tokyo departures under the old U.S.-Japan aviation agreement. A new bilateral pact, reached in January, opened the door for ANA to provide the service.
JAL said it is finding new markets in Japan's smaller cities, less affected by Japan's economic downturn than the huge urban centers of Tokyo and Osaka, and may start Niigata-Honolulu service next year. JAL already has daily Honolulu service of three flights from Tokyo, three from Osaka and one each from Nagoya, Fukuoka and Sapporo. It has six Honolulu flights a week from Sendai and two a week from Hiroshima, as well as daily Tokyo-Kona service.
