{"id":231817,"date":"2016-07-08T06:06:50","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T20:06:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=231817"},"modified":"2016-07-08T06:06:50","modified_gmt":"2016-07-07T20:06:50","slug":"hk-airlines-joins-growing-list-carriers-flying-nmi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/hk-airlines-joins-growing-list-carriers-flying-nmi\/","title":{"rendered":"HK Airlines joins growing list of carriers flying to NMI"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hong<\/a>
Hong Kong Airlines Saipan Station Airport Services supervisor Mary Joan Cabrera Boongaling, center, and the local ground handling crew of Pacific Oriental Inc. pose for a group photo in front of the logo before the arrival of the carrier\u2019s inaugural flight early Thursday morning. (Jon Perez)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hong Kong Airlines became the latest carrier to have direct flights to Saipan with its inaugural flight arriving without much fanfare yesterday. The 292-seat Airbus 330-300 landed at 1:16am at the Francisco C. Ada\/Saipan International Airport.<\/p>\n

The inaugural flight was scheduled to leave at the Chek Lap Kok International Airport in Hong Kong but got delayed for almost an hour as they prevented four passengers to get on the plane<\/p>\n

Hong Kong Airlines Saipan Station Airport Services supervisor May Joan Cabrera Boongaling said the flight was only 46 minutes delayed from its expected time of arrival of 12:30am. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey have to offload four passengers on the flight since one will have an expired passport if they arrive here on Saipan,\u201d said Boongaling, who added that this is Hong Kong Airlines\u2019 first station that is under the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cHong Kong Airlines started flying mostly in Chinese cities before offering flights to Australia and Canada. Central office wanted to penetrate the U.S. market that\u2019s why we wanted to put our best foot forward,\u201d Boongaling.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey carefully planned and put more attention for the inaugural flight. We wanted to make a good impression. The inaugural flight went smoothly, except for that incident where we have to offload some passengers,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have twice a week flights, inbound and outbound, and right now we\u2019re booked for the month of July. Management will carefully study if it\u2019s possible to add a few more flights here on Saipan but for sure we are planning to have routes in key cities in the mainland U.S. soon,\u201d said Boongaling.<\/p>\n

Most of the 290 plus passengers are families looking to spend some quality time at the beach and tourists who wanted to try playing in some of the island\u2019s gaming facilities. They booked their tour packages with Hong Kong travel agents.<\/p>\n

Boongaling is Hong Kong Airlines\u2019 lone representative on Saipan, while a number of staff from their central office were on the island for a few weeks to train personnel from Pacific Oriental, Inc., HK Airlines\u2019 partner in ground handling.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey just assisted in training POI staff in getting familiar with the system used when passengers check in, and handling and loading cargo,\u201d Boongaling said.<\/p>\n

POI Airport Service supervisor Vic Reyes said this is the sixth airline company that they partnered with. Korean carriers Asiana Airlines, Jeju Air, and Jin Air, China Eastern, and Philippine Airlines Express are the others. He added that POI has enough staff to fulfill its obligations.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo far we\u2019re still good in handling all six airlines. We have enough staff to assist the passengers and work on the said air carriers. If each of them increased its flights then we will surely add more personnel,\u201d said Reyes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hong Kong Airlines became the latest carrier to have direct flights to Saipan with its…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":231819,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[6558,257,12417,11966],"class_list":["post-231817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-jin-air","tag-nmi","tag-pacific-oriental-inc","tag-poi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231817","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\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}