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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Pacific Oriental, Inc. general manager Frank Camacho disclosed these developments, saying that his company would be handling ground services for the charter flights.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope that they would meet the fallback of [the] JAL [pullout],\u201d Camacho said. \u201cThey\u2019re good enough already for the peak season.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2014two from Kansai, and one each from Niigata and Nagoya, according to Camacho.<\/p>\n
He said the three other flights would come in to ferry passengers back to their respective Japanese destinations.<\/p>\n
Camacho, however, expects the JAL charter flights alone to bring in some 1,040 passengers from Japan this December.<\/p>\n
Besides JAL, Omni Airlines would also provide charter services to Saipan, according to Camacho, who disclosed that air carrier has requested for POI\u2019s ground handling services for the charters.<\/p>\n
While Camacho bared that Omni and POI were still finalizing the ground handling contracts for the charters, he said the air carrier\u2019s charters would provide at least three flights from Haneda, Fukuoka, and Kansai in late December\u2014a development that could raise the visitor arrivals through the charters, along with JAL\u2019s, to nearly 2,000.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
In that interview, Salas said the airline\u2019s representatives were \u201cvery interested and positive\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s passenger traffic.<\/p>\n
Following the pullout of JAL\u2019s 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\u2019s figures. MVA statistics showed there were 22,491 Japanese tourists who came to the CNMI in October, several thousands less than October 2004\u2019s 28,586 Japanese visitors.<\/p>\n
With Japan remaining as the CNMI\u2019s premier tourist market, the decline in Japanese arrivals translated to an overall decline by 11.55 percent in October\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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.<\/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-95817","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\/95817","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=95817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95817\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}