Two offer Japan charter flights this Dec.

While the CNMI awaits the decision of an undisclosed Asian air carrier to provide regular flight services to Saipan, charter flights from five Japanese cities in December will help alleviate declining tourist arrivals brought on by the pullout of Japan Airlines.

JAL will be providing charter flights to Saipan from Kansai, Niigata and Nagoya. Another air carrier, Omni Airlines, will provide charter flights from Haneda and Fukuoka, as well as Kansai.

Pacific Oriental, Inc. general manager Frank Camacho disclosed these developments, saying that his company would be handling ground services for the charter flights.

“I hope that they would meet the fallback of [the] JAL [pullout],” Camacho said. “They’re good enough already for the peak season.”

The JAL charter flights will be coming into Saipan on Dec. 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 17, and 31. Of these seven flights, four would bring in passengers from Japan—two from Kansai, and one each from Niigata and Nagoya, according to Camacho.

He said the three other flights would come in to ferry passengers back to their respective Japanese destinations.

Camacho, however, expects the JAL charter flights alone to bring in some 1,040 passengers from Japan this December.

Besides JAL, Omni Airlines would also provide charter services to Saipan, according to Camacho, who disclosed that air carrier has requested for POI’s ground handling services for the charters.

While Camacho bared that Omni and POI were still finalizing the ground handling contracts for the charters, he said the air carrier’s charters would provide at least three flights from Haneda, Fukuoka, and Kansai in late December—a development that could raise the visitor arrivals through the charters, along with JAL’s, to nearly 2,000.

The scheduled charters come in the wake of the disclosure by the Commonwealth Ports Authority that an Asian air carrier might introduce regular flights to Saipan soon.

The airline, which CPA did not disclose pending its final decision to service the CNMI, would make the decision known by December, according to CPA executive director Carlos Salas, in an interview last Friday.

In that interview, Salas said the airline’s representatives were “very interested and positive” about servicing Saipan as a destination, adding that the CNMI government has offered the airline company some incentives, including a 50-percent discount on all airport fees.

The Marianas Visitors Authority has also reportedly vowed to collaborate with the airline company in promoting the CNMI as a tourist destination to enhance the company’s passenger traffic.

Following the pullout of JAL’s regular flights to Saipan from Tokyo and Osaka in October, Japanese arrivals to the CNMI dropped by 21 percent during that month compared to October 2004’s figures. MVA statistics showed there were 22,491 Japanese tourists who came to the CNMI in October, several thousands less than October 2004’s 28,586 Japanese visitors.

With Japan remaining as the CNMI’s premier tourist market, the decline in Japanese arrivals translated to an overall decline by 11.55 percent in October’s visitor arrivals. MVA recorded a total of 35,418 tourists who came to the CNMI last October, nearly 5,000 visitors less than the October 2004 total of 40,042.