Posted at 11:14 a.m., Wednesday, November 21, 2001

JAL to extend suspension of Hawai'i flights

By David Butts
Advertiser Staff Writer

TOKYO — Japan Airlines Co., which decided last month to cut 32 percent of its flights to Hawai'i until the end of this year, said today that it would extend the cutbacks until as late as March 31.

Asia's largest airline said demand for travel has not recovered enough since the Sept. 11 attacks to warrant a return to its normal schedule. The number of Japanese visitors to Hawai'i was down 54 percent in October, compared with a year ago, while arrivals from the West Coast of the U.S. were off only 13 percent.

Japan Airlines' decision is disappointing to the hundreds of Hawai'i businesses that rely heavily on Japanese tourists.

"It is a severe blow, especially to the O'ahu economy," said Bob Coe, president of DFS Hawai'i.

Gov. Ben Cayetano traveled to Japan in early October to launch a marketing campaign aimed at enticing Japanese tourists back, but the numbers remain down.

"We need to do more," Coe said. "Las Vegas is 90 percent occupied. New York is fighting back. We have to fight."

Japan Airlines will increase the number of flights during the peak New Year holiday period, but then return to its reduced schedule of 51 flights per week after Jan. 7, said JAL spokeswoman Irene Jackson.

Japan Airlines had hoped to return to a full schedule of 75 flights per week to Hawai'i in January. The airline now plans to resume its full schedule of flights from Tokyo and Osaka to Honolulu on March 1 and resume the normal schedule for flights from smaller cities, such as Sendai and Niigata, on April 1.

"There are still hundreds of thousand of Japanese leaving Japan," said Coe. "The most important thought we have is we need to get a bigger share of those people."

"Our share has dropped a lot. In 1995, 13 percent of all those leaving Japan came to Hawai'i. Now its in the 7.5-percent range. If we could get our share back, Hawai'i would do a lot better."