Japan flights cut Japan Airlines said today it will cut its already reduced Hawaii service in half as fears of a new disease and the war in Iraq are giving a growing number of travelers sufficient reason not to fly.
Japan Airlines plans
to cut its already reduced
Hawaii service in halfBy Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.com
From May 7 through the end of May, JAL's Tokyo-Honolulu service will consist of only one flight a day, down from a two.
That will pick up again June 1 to two flights a day through July 14, but that will still be just two-thirds of the three daily flights that had been planned for that period, said Gilbert Kimura, JAL sales director in Hawaii.
The Osaka-Honolulu service will be cut in half from April 24 through July 14 to one flight a day from the two that had been planned, Kimura said.
"The war could be over in a week or so," but Japanese will still be worried about traveling unless they can get some reassurance that they aren't likely to catch SARS, the mysterious and sometimes fatal disease that originated recently in Asia, Kimura said.
JAL had already cut its Hawaii services for April, announcing in late March that the Honolulu-Tokyo service would drop to 14 flights a week from the 21 originally planned and the Osaka-Honolulu service would drop to seven flights a week from a planned 14.
So far this month, Hawaii arrivals on flights from Japan are down a little more than 30 percent from a year ago, according to daily figures gathered by the state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism.
U.S.-Hawaii travel is growing. For the same period, arrivals in Hawaii from U.S. points were up just over 3 percent, according to the DBEDT figures.
JAL, which recently merged with another Japanese airline to become Japan Airlines System Corp., still runs its daily flight from Tokyo to Kona and has several flights a week to Honolulu from other parts of Japan.
Officials at Japan Air System's headquarters in Tokyo said the airline said it expects a decline in overseas passengers this month that will be bigger than the 20 percent it has recently predicted.
The airline today also announced cuts in service from Japan to China and some other overseas destinations.
Another Japanese carrier, All Nippon Airways, said today that it is continuing to run its one daily Tokyo-Honolulu flight. ANA has said, however, that it will cut its Tokyo-Hog Kong service in half because of SARS fears.
Last week, Northwest Airlines cut its Tokyo-Honolulu service in half to one flight a day and its Osaka-Honolulu service was trimmed to six flights a week, from seven.
Japan Airlines