TokyoTomo Travel Guide

A new charter flight business opportunity seems to be evolving between Japan and Canada, following the recent open air agreement reached, except for the Tokyo metropolitan airports, during the air talks between Japanese and Canadian aviation officials.

A Canadian company aims to start 7 weekly roundtrip charter flights from spring in 2010, introducing two Boeing B767-300ERs dedicated to its planned Japan/Canada route. The company has not decided on its name yet, but, in fact, has a unique plan as to let a contracted travel agent, a charterer, to operate charter flights under its own preferred brand name. On the occasion of his recent visit to Japan, Jacques Kavafian of Research Capital Corporation, who supports this charter project, explained that the Canadian company aims to stimulate travel demand between Japan and Canada, by operating direct flights from all Japanese airports with flexible schedules and providing affordable airfares amid the decreasing seat capacity between the two countries.

With regards to detailed service aspects including actual routes and seat configurations, the Canadian charter company will negotiate with contracted travel agents. Initially, the company intends to operate direct charter flights as far as Vancouver from the respective Japanese cities with onward flight connections to other Canadian destinations by its partner airlines. The company would also like to accommodate traffic to Mexico via Canada as passengers bound for Mexico are not subject to the Canadian immigration unlike transit via U.S. where Mexico-bound passengers have to go through U.S. immigration. The charter company will hire Japanese speaking cabin crew and airport personnel. It will also have one representative stationed in Japan for coordination with Japanese travel agents. In order to mitigate risk for the travel agents, the company will have extra aircraft standing by in case of operational irregularity, set up affordable air fares and build up a stable financial structure. The air fares, excluding the fuel surcharge, will be kept as low as 60 percent of the rival airlines, said Kavafian.

The charter rules were relaxed in Japan last December but, at this moment, the company has no intention to apply the revised charter rules. While the charter company implied charter operations between Japan and its third countries, Kavafian concluded, “The company will for the time being concentrate to develop a new charter business market as a new charter company with a small network.”

During his stay in Japan, he explained the charter project to four major travel agents and he got an impression that those travel agents had taken a strong interest in the charter project. He is eager to decide on further details of the charter project in time for the JATA World Congress this coming September. In Korea, the Canadian charter company has been working for sometime on the charter project and is soon scheduled to start its first charter flight from Korea with the similar scheme.

Source: Travel Vision

Travel Vision Inc. provides information on the travel industry in Japan via "Daily Travel Vision", a Japanese-language e-mail newsletter, and the "Travel Vision" website. There are nearly 110,000 people working in the Japanese travel industry, and Travel Vision is proud to be bringing travel news to more than 30,000 people through Daily Travel Vision.