Owing to high passenger demand, Asiana Airlines will use a larger aircraft for its Saipan-Seoul flights beginning today.<\/p>\n
Asiana\u2019s move offers a glimpse of hope for the local tourism industry, which has been suffering from reduced airline seats capacity and bracing for the impact of Japan Airlines\u2019 looming withdrawal from Saipan.<\/p>\n
Kwang Joong Kim, general manager of Asiana\u2019s Saipan office, said the Korean air carrier would utilize the 310-seat Boeing 777 aircraft for its daily Saipan-Seoul service starting today through the end of August.<\/p>\n
Currently, Asiana operates the flight using the 260-seater Boeing 767 airplane twice a week. For the five remaining days, the airline uses Airbus 321, which can seat only 177 passengers.<\/p>\n
The shift to a bigger aircraft will provide the destination additional capacity of at least 1,397 seats until the end of August.<\/p>\n
Kim also reported that from Sept. 1 through Oct. 31, Asiana would use a Boeing 767 aircraft for the daily flights. This is expected to result in an increase of at least 3,569 seats to the Northern Marianas\u2019 current airline capacity.<\/p>\n
Kim added that Asiana would use an even larger aircraft if passenger demand continues to increase. \u201cWe will keep trying to increase seats availability,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Asiana announced plans to provide via-Seoul flights between Japan and Saipan starting October 2005, which is about the same time that JAL will suspend scheduled flights from Tokyo and Osaka to Saipan.<\/p>\n
Kim had said that the airline was looking at tapping the Japanese travel markets of Sendai, Toyama, Fukuoka, Yonago, and Fukushima for the via-Seoul service.<\/p>\n
He had expressed confidence that the service would receive a favorable response from Japanese travelers, especially those who have to fly to Tokyo, Osaka, or Nagoya in order to access Saipan flights.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost people who want to visit Saipan, but live outside Narita, Osaka or Nagoya, have to pay a lot for domestic flights. It\u2019s actually more expensive to take domestic flights than to travel from a city in Japan to Inchon,\u201d Kim had noted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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