‘JAL said ‘no’ to NMI’s pleas’

Local authorities have done their part to convince Japan Airlines to stay but the airline company has “bluntly said no” to the CNMI’s petitions, said business executive Marian Aldan-Pierce before the Senate yesterday.

Aldan Pierce, president of the DFS Galleria, member of the Marianas Visitors Authority board, co-chair of the Strategic Economic Development Council, and co-chair of the newly formed business group G-10, was called in to answer questions on JAL’s pullout.

Aldan-Pierce was eventually confirmed as member of the MVA board yesterday, together with Century Insurance president David M. Sablan.

During her testimony, Aldan-Pierce said that the CNMI practically begged JAL executives not to leave the Marianas. She said that, in separate meetings with JAL in Japan, the CNMI asked the company not to make a 100-percent pullout.

“The difference between us and other [places] is that it’s 100 percent pullout in the CNMI. It would be very devastating,” she said. “When we met with them to petition them to stay, they were very blunt. They said no. That didn’t deter us from coming back.”

During a second delegation trip to Japan, she said CNMI officials met with the Japan Ministry of Transportation to help with the slot availability at Narita International Airport.

When JAL leaves the CNMI after October this year, it brings with it the slot at the airport.

“We asked Transportation if the government could help us. Just the same, we were told very bluntly, ‘no’. We’re told that they can’t tell a private sector what to do,” she said.

“We practically begged JAL to delay the pullout until we can [adjust] here as a country. …We appealed to their sense of humanity. They just won’t,” said Aldan-Pierce.

JAL’s departure from the Marianas this year would mean a loss of over 100,000 tourists from Japan. JAL brings about 155,865 passengers to the CNMI annually.

The government said the JAL pullout would result in $80 million to $100 million in losses across the community. This is based on a projection of a 45-percent decline in the number of Japanese tourists.

MVA said that about 400,000 tourists from Japan arrive in the CNMI every year, representing nearly 75 percent of the CNMI’s tourism market.

A commissioned study conducted by the Economist.com in June 2005 said that the Commonwealth stands to lose as much as $216.2 million in economic output annually when JAL stops its operations.

Overall, the CNMI’s tourism industry has a total economic impact of $733 million annually. It directly and indirectly employs about 6,200 people in the CNMI, with an annual payroll of about $70 million.

Economists.com said 4,000 of these jobs, or about 12 percent of the total CNMI business employment, are in the core visitor air industries and generate $45 million in salaries and wages for CNMI workers each year.

The other 2,200 jobs depend on tourist spending and produce $25 million in annual payroll.

On an individual basis, tourists reportedly spend a total of $367 annually in the CNMI.

In 2004, visitors spent about $150 million in lodging alone, the consulting firm added.