{"id":289207,"date":"2018-11-26T06:06:13","date_gmt":"2018-11-25T20:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=289207"},"modified":"2018-11-26T06:06:13","modified_gmt":"2018-11-25T20:06:13","slug":"hk-express-resumes-flights-to-nmi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/hk-express-resumes-flights-to-nmi\/","title":{"rendered":"HK Express resumes flights to NMI"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Marianas Visitors Authority marketing staff greet and give shell leis to the passengers of Hong Kong Express during their arrival at the Francisco C. Ada\/Saipan International Airport last Friday afternoon. Hong Kong Express was the first commercial airline to make international flight to the CNMI after Super Typhoon Yutu\u2019s destruction last month shut down the airport. (MVA)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hong Kong Express arrived at the Francisco C. Ada\/Saipan International Airport last Friday at about 2:35pm with full capacity of 180 passengers from Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

It was the first commercial airline to resume international flights to the CNMI after Super Typhoon Yutu\u2019s destruction last Oct. 24 and 25, which shut down the Saipan airport.<\/p>\n

[embedyt] https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=V5YtFEJ6Eh4&width=500&height=350[\/embedyt]<\/p>\n

Tourists, including children, exit the door upon their arrival at the Francisco C. Ada\/Saipan International Airport last Friday afternoon. The Hong Kong Express, which carried 180 passengers from Hong Kong, was the first commercial airline to resume international flights to the CNMI after Super Typhoon Yutu\u2019s destruction last Oct. 25 and 25, which shut down the Saipan airport. Members of the Marianas Visitors Authority marketing staff greet and give shell leis to the passengers. (FERDIE DE LA TORRE)<\/p>\n

Carrying a welcome banner, four Marianas Visitors Authority staff greeted the visitors and gave shell leis to the tourists as they stepped inside the airport\u2019s gate.<\/p>\n

MVA marketing manager Thomas Kim, who was among those who greeted the visitors, said it\u2019s been a relief, knowing that tourists are coming back.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really need for the flights to come back as soon as possible. We knew it was a working process, knowing that we took a lot of damage from Typhoon Yutu, especially the airport,\u201d Kim said.<\/p>\n

Kim said they are thankful to the Commonwealth Ports Authority for allowing them to greet the incoming tourists and for their hard work of opening and operating the airport as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

Kim said more international flights will arrive this week. He said they will do airport greetings for each airline company.<\/p>\n

Meko Fok and her husband, Martin Ip, said it\u2019s both their idea to come to Saipan after watching about the beautiful island from TV.<\/p>\n

Fok and Ip, both 30 years old, said they\u2019re aware about Typhoon Yutu\u2019s destruction to the island last month, but they still proceeded with their travel.<\/p>\n

Fok said they appreciate the warm welcome of the MVA staff who gave them shell leis.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love it here. I love Saipan,\u201d said Fok, who is an account executive in a company in China. The couple will stay on Saipan for five days.<\/p>\n

Liu Yi, a salesperson in Hong Kong, said she was aware of Yutu\u2019s destruction, but still continued her five-day travel to the island to enjoy and relax.<\/p>\n

Yi, 25, said their flight was also delayed for several hours due to Typhoon Man-Yi but that she\u2019s very excited to tour the island.<\/p>\n

Yi learned about the \u201cbeautiful CNMI\u201d upon reading about it in a newspaper.<\/p>\n

MVA managing director Christopher A. Concepcion said they are pleased to welcome Hong Kong Express back as the first commercial airline to resume international flights to the CNMI after Yutu effectively closed the Saipan airport on Oct. 24.<\/p>\n

Concepcion said United Airlines has been operating between Saipan and Guam right after the storm but that\u2019s essentially considered a domestic flight between two U.S. jurisdictions.<\/p>\n

He said MVA partners in Hong Kong and mainland China, and Korea as well, have been pushing hard behind the scenes to get the airlines to resume regular scheduled service to allow the tourism industry to resume normal operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are very pleased to see some positive results come to fruition,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Concepcion said many businesses that have traditionally relied on tourists to survive have suffered tremendous harm from the lack of tourists arriving into the CNMI.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has a domino effect on everything else in our islands as [fewer] tourists mean less revenue for businesses, which means less taxes paid to the CNMI government, which means less resources for our government to spend on our needs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Concepcion said it\u2019s going to be a huge challenge to get things back to normal in the industry, but they are seeing great things happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are very positive that things will only get better and continue to improve from here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Century Tours operations manager Yumei Bao welcomed 65 customers out of the 180 passengers at the airport.<\/p>\n

Bao said their bus was waiting at the airport for the tourists that would bring them straight for sightseeing because the flight was delayed for 12 hours due to the typhoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel very happy to welcome the customers because it\u2019s already one month that we don\u2019t have any customer,\u201d Bao said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hong Kong Express arrived at the Francisco C. Ada\/Saipan International Airport last Friday at about…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":289227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[26,15099,212,23107],"class_list":["post-289207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-cnmi","tag-hong-kong-express","tag-mva","tag-super-typhoon-yutu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289207","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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}