Northwest asked to provide more flights

The Japan-Saipan Travel Association will ask Northwest Airlines to consider providing a Nagoya-Saipan direct service to increase visitor arrivals and help the ailing tourism economy.

Tour operators on the island are hoping to convince Northwest Airlines to provide at least two to three direct flights a week from Nagoya to Saipan, according to Iwao Sakai, president of JSTA.

Northwest Airlines has announced its plan to use bigger aircraft from DC10 to B747 by October 1999.

The Commonwealth Ports Authority board already gave a conditional approval to the request of Northwest Airlines to extend its airline incentive program by seven months.

However, failure to meet the three conditions by January 2000 means that the incentive program would still end on Feb. 29, 2000.

The requirements which must be met by Northwest are:

• change of its aircraft from DC10 to B747 anytime between now until January;

• submission of the traffic forecast from the current period to October 2000, and

• provided that extension of such incentive does not jeopardize the airport’s debt service.

Currently, Japan Airlines has been providing charter flights from Nagoya and Fukuoka. Sakai said he expects visitor arrivals from Japan to increase next month because of the summer vacation in Japan. JAL is planning to provide more charter flights next month.

Earlier, JSTA made a similar request to Japan Airlines in a meeting with JAL officials last month. Likewise, the Hotel Association of Northern Mariana Islands asked the Japanese flag carrier to consider having a Nagoya-Saipan-Guam or Nagoya-Saipan flight at least three times a week to help boost visitor arrivals in the CNMI.

JAL has been carrying out its own promotional campaign to assist the CNMI’s ailing tourism economy, which has been battered by Asia’s economic crisis.

Tour operators are expecting to see a bigger improvement of the Japanese market toward the end of the year as more charter flights are expected to be carried out by JAL.

The absence of direct service from key cities in Japan led many Japanese tourists to visit neighboring island Guam because they do not want to wait for another 30 minutes to take a connecting flight to Saipan.

With the stiff competition in the travel industry, tourism officials are having difficulty marketing the island as distinct destination compared to neighboring Guam. To provide the visitors more activities on the island, the Marianas Visitors Authority launched Visit the Marianas ’99 and Saipanda, the Japanese mascot.