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High passenger traffic seen on Dec. 31
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Posted on Dec 27 2005
Passenger traffic at the Saipan International Airport will be at its peak on Saturday as nine jumbo jets, most of them from Japan, are set to land on the tarmac in time for the islands’ celebration of New Year’s Eve.
Commonwealth Ports Authority executive director Lee Cabrera said the nine passenger aircraft would arrive from 12 midnight to 6am on Saturday.
Cabrera assured, though, that the situation would be manageable.
“It’s just an issue of ground handling,” Cabrera said.
The CPA has been coordinating with the airport’s ground handlers to ensure smooth operations when the nine jumbo jets come in.
Cabrera said the jets would include three 747 aircraft of Northwest Airlines, one 767 aircraft of Japan Airlines, and one 757 of Omni Airlines. All these aircraft will arrive from various Japanese cities.
Cabrera also said Asiana Airlines would have two flights coming in from Seoul, while China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines would have one flight each from China.
The CNMI expects the arrival of nine passenger aircraft within a span of six hours to boost visitor arrivals for the month, with approximately 3,000 tourists expected to be on the inbound flights.
More chartered flights have been coming into the CNMI during the holiday season. Besides JAL, which has flown to Saipan six times from Dec. 7 to 17, Omni 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 has been providing ground-handling services for the chartered flights, earlier disclosed that Northwest would also have two additional flights from Tokyo on Dec. 30 and Jan. 2 via Boeing 747 jets that have seating capacities of 400 passengers, in addition to its 21 weekly flights to Saipan.
