JAL may cut flights
The airline is looking at
eliminating Hawaii service
from four regional airports
Japan Airlines may stop Hawaii service from four regional airports in Japan, concentrating on the major cities.
"There has been some discussion," said Gilbert Kimura, JAL regional sales manager in Honolulu. He said the Honolulu office has heard nothing definite but it knows the board of directors of the parent Japan Airlines System Inc. is looking at ways to cut losses.
One way would be to trim flights out of Sendai, Sapporo, Niigata and Hiroshima, Kimura said.
"The last three or four months, because of SARS and the war, JAL has really lost a lot of money. The board of directors is reviewing all the operations to weed out some of the routes that are not really making money," Kimura said.
The flights to Honolulu from the regions away from the biggest cities fit that description, he said, commenting on a story in the Yomiuri newspaper in Japan, which was repeated internationally by Bloomberg News.
A change at the regional airports likely would not come quickly because the regional governments would have to be consulted first, Kimura said.
JAL has six flights a week from Sapporo to Honolulu, four a week from Sendai to Honolulu, two a week in the winter from Niigata to Honolulu and two a week in the summer from Hiroshima to Honolulu.
One factor that makes a regional cutback seem reasonable is the merger in October with Japan Air System, a huge domestic carrier within Japan. That made it easier for JAL to get feeds to its "main-trunk" flights from smaller airports all over Japan, Kimura said.
Meanwhile, JAL will reinstate some suspended Hawaii flights starting July 15. JAL will bring its Osaka-Honolulu service back up to its normal two flights a day, from one a day, and will add a daily Tokyo-Honolulu flight, bringing service on that route to three a day, still one flight short of its peak.
Kimura said JAL has launched a $10 million campaign in Japan to promote Hawaii as a destination.