Holiday season sees 15 JAL, Omni charter flights

More chartered flights from Japan would bring in tourists from seven cities during the holidays, a development that is expected to add nearly 4,000 tourists to CNMI visitor arrivals.

Besides Japan Airlines, which has flown to Saipan six times from Dec. 7 to 17, Omni Airlines will bring in Japanese tourists via eight chartered flights from four Japanese cities from Dec. 30 to Jan. 6. JAL will also provide two more chartered flights on Dec. 31 and Jan. 2 from Tokyo and Osaka, respectively.

Pacific Oriental, Inc. general manager Frank Camacho, whose company will provide ground-handling services for the chartered flights, disclosed these developments yesterday, following Asiana Airlines’ disclosure that it would add three more regular flights to Saipan from Seoul, Korea from Dec. 23 to March 1.

Additionally, Northwest Airlines will also have two additional flights from Tokyo on Dec. 30 and Jan. 2 via Boeing 747 jets that have seating capacities of 400 passengers, according to Camacho. POI performs ramp and cargo operations for Northwest.

“This time of the year is always busy. Somehow, Omni and JAL have probably more passengers in the reservation system,” Camacho said. “We hope the charters will continue in 2006.”

For this month, Camacho said JAL would have a total of seven charter flights, including the one scheduled on Dec. 31. Of these seven flights, four would bring in passengers from Japan—two from Osaka, and one each from Niigata and Nagoya, according to Camacho.

Camacho said JAL’s Jan. 2 flight from Osaka to Saipan, has a seat capacity of 230, bringing the approximate number of inbound passengers from the JAL charters at 1,270.

The Omni flights, meanwhile, have seat capacities of 223 passengers each, and are expected to bring in 1,784 visitors from Osaka, Haneda, Fukuoka, and Kumamoto.

Camacho also disclosed that two additional Northwest flights have been scheduled to arrive Saipan from Tokyo on Dec. 30 and Jan. 2. The flights will bring in an additional 800 tourists, on top of Northwest’s daily flights to Saipan from Osaka, Tokyo and Nagoya.

Following the pullout of JAL’s regular flights to Saipan from Tokyo and Osaka in October, Japanese arrivals to the CNMI dropped by 21 percent during that month compared to October 2004’s figures. MVA statistics showed there were 22,491 Japanese tourists who came to the CNMI in October, several thousands less than October 2004’s 28,586 Japanese visitors.

The CNMI’s tourism industry players have expressed concern that JAL’s pullout would result in a loss of nearly one-third of the Japanese market, which is equivalent to over a hundred thousand Japanese tourists yearly.

The impact of the JAL pullout even became more evident last November, when Japanese arrivals declined by 28 percent when they settled at 21,893 during the month, nearly 10,000 less than November 2004’s 30,454 Japanese tourists.