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Jeju Air may have eased Asiana suspension
With the arrival of Jeju Airlines, the seven-day suspension of Asiana Airlines from Oct. 14 to 20 last month may have not have hit so hard.
Marianas Visitors Authority managing director Perry Tenorio earlier said the loss to the CNMI of this suspension would be about $6.7 million based on a load factor of 80 percent.
As to whether losses last month reached this figure, Tenorio said the MVA is unfortunately not privy to the actual economic activity of the month in question.
He said MVA’s economic impact projections are based on weighted averages of various variables by source country. This model is used to estimate the contribution of the travel industry in the CNMI, he said.
The question can better be answered by the Department of Finance or the Department of Commence, he said.
But with that, Tenorio cited Jeju Air’s launch on Oct. 1, and the 10.3-percent increase in arrivals from Korea in 2014 over the previous year.
“It would stand to reason that the increase in visitors will have correlated increase in economic activity,” he said.
It was reported that Jeju Air would bring 68,985 seats to the CNMI per year, with an economic impact estimated at over $122.9 million based on a load factor of 80 percent.
South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transportation ordered the seven-day suspension in June because of a violation of safety regulations by the airline during a flight to Saipan.
