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Tourists stranded due to cancelled NWA flight
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Posted on Apr 20 2006
About a hundred tourists were stranded for a day on Saipan due to the cancellation of a Northwest Airline flight to Nagoya yesterday.
The passengers were scheduled to leave at 8:55am yesterday.
A group of 45 tourists staying at the Hyatt Regency Saipan said they were already on the plane but were asked to disembark due to a “maintenance problem.”
“We had to come back here to the hotel. It’s not good because these people have to be back to work tomorrow,” said tour escort Yukiko Tachibana in an interview.
She said the tourists spent three days on the island. They were handled by the JTB PMT tour company.
Youhei Ichikawa of JTB PMT said they have a total of 75 tourists who got stranded yesterday due to the cancelled flight.
“We always have that problem,” said Ichikawa.
He said this was not the first time that Northwest cancelled its flights.
The Saipan Tribune called and e-mailed NWA officials, including Guam and Saipan manager Richard A. Parsons, but the airline had issued no statements as of press time.
In February this year, Northwest Airlines expressed its “continued dedication to the CNMI and Japan market” as it announced that it would introduce a new second nonstop service between Tokyo’s Narita Airport and Saipan.
The new service is set to begin on April 24, 2006, using a second Boeing 747 Jumbo flying three times a week.
The flight will carry 400 economy and 30 business class passengers, for a total of 430 seats.
The second NW flight from Tokyo will generate an additional 5,160 additional seats from Japan per month, which is seen as a major boost for the CNMI’s tourism industry.
Effective Oct. 1 last year, Northwest also introduced daily nonstop flights between Osaka and Saipan.
This came three days before Japan Airlines stopped its regular flights to the island after 28 years.
Northwest also offers daily service from Saipan to Tokyo and Nagoya.
