Freedom Airlines, a major air service in the Commonwealth, has just enacted its first major price hike in 12 years, responding to rising fuel and shipping costs, a move that is sure to put added strain on travelers. <\/p>\n
The increase comes just after Continental Airlines earlier this month announced it will cut direct flights between Saipan and the Philippines in July, also citing a jump in fuel costs. <\/p>\n
Inquiries with Freedom\u2019s offices showed the price of tickets from Saipan to Tinian have jumped $20 to $84. The price spike is steeper for tickets on the airline\u2019s Tinian-to-Rota route, now up $58 to $229, and on tickets for flying from Tinian to Guam, up $69 to $261.<\/p>\n
Aviation fuel costs, shipping charges and skyrocketing automobile gas prices over the last several years have put the airline in a tough financial situation, according to general manager Joaquim Flores. <\/p>\n
\u201c9-11 really impacted us and it just snowballed from there,\u201d Flores said in an interview Friday. \u201cThe price of everything has gone up.\u201d<\/p>\n
For example, Flores noted higher shipping costs have put a severe squeeze on the airline because its aviation fuel must be shipped from Australia at a cost of $29,000 every two weeks. <\/p>\n
Mounting insurance costs for airline and an array of other added costs have also drained the airline\u2019s funds. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the just cost of doing business here,\u201d said Flores.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Freedom Airlines, a major air service in the Commonwealth, has just enacted its first major price hike in 12 years, responding to rising fuel and shipping costs, a move that is sure to put added strain on travelers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123835\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}