TokyoTomo Travel Guide

Singapore Airlines (SQ) is expanding its Singapore/Kansai services with three additional weekly flights during the winter schedule starting from 31 October 2010 to 26 March 2011. The flight departs from Kansai at 23:30 and arrives at Singapore early next morning. This will enable the passengers to do business or sightseeing soon after they arrive at Singapore, or enhance connectivity to other SQ flights for onward destinations. The current daily SQ Kansai flights will be increased to ten weekly services during the northern winter period.

The new ten weekly services will be starting from 1 November 2010, using Airbus A330-300 aircraft for two classes, Business and Economy, and the latest version of in-flight entertainment systems will be introduced for both classes. The flight schedule is as follows.

Source: Travel Vision

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Japan Airlines (JAL) and Finnair, both members of the oneworld® Alliance, have decided to further expand their existing codeshare agreement. From August 1, 2010, JAL will start to codeshare on flights operated by Finnair between Helsinki and the 7 European cities of Berlin, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Munich, Brussels, Warsaw and Gothenburg – the second-largest city in Sweden and the latest addition to JAL’s network which already covers 36 destinations in Europe.

JAL and Finnair first commenced codeshare flights in December 2005 and now offer passengers services on 3 routes that connect the Finnish capital to Tokyo (Narita), Osaka (Kansai) as well as Nagoya (Chubu) with 20 weekly flights. Customers may also purchase from JAL, tickets for Finnair-operated flights that carry the “JL” indicator, linking 5 European cities – Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Frankfurt and Amsterdam, with Helsinki. With this extended cooperation, the alliance partners now offer codeshare services to a total of 13 destinations on 15 routes.

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Jetstar Asia Airways (3K) started service from Kansai International Airport to Singapore via Taipei on July 5. The respective inaugural flights, arriving from Singapore via Taipei and departing from Kansai, were operated with a nearly-full load of passengers. It is the first direct flight between Kansai and Taipei served by a low cost carrier (LCC). Speaking at an inaugural flight ceremony, Masaru Kataoka, Regional General Manager, Jetstar Airways (JQ) and Jetstar Asia Airways (3K) said, “We are extremely pleased that our network has been for the first time extended to other cities ever since Jetstar started the Japan/Australia service back in March 2007.”

The inaugural flight passengers from Kansai were mostly traveling on package tours including Hankyu Trapics. Kataoka mentioned, “The operating permit for our inaugural flight slated for July 5 was issued only on June 23. We had therefore an extremely short period for our direct sales, but the online booking is gradually picking up. It is yet difficult to forecast the outcome over the next several months, but eventually, we expect the sales ratio between the direct sales and the agency sales to be nearly fifty-fifty.”

Jetstar Asia Airways (3K) launched a special sales campaign to mark the new service from Kansai International Airport. Its first offer was 4,000 yen for a round trip from Kansai to Taipei limited to a departure on July 5 only, followed by a round trip fare of 8,000 yen from Kansai to Taipei and of 28,000 yen from Kansai to Singapore via Taipei limited to the period from July 6 to 12.

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