Japan Travel Trade Weekly News
Keeping you abreast of what's going on in the
Japanese travel and tourism industries.
News consolidated by Travel Vision, Inc. updated every week.
JAL Group Increases Charter Flights from Haneda by 280% to 800 in
FY2008 with Substantial Increase on Hong Kong Route
Early-May 2008
The JAL Group plans to operate approximately 800 (400
round-trips) charter flights from/ to Haneda during FY2008, thereby
substantially exceeding the 280 charter flights operated during the
previous fiscal year. The aggregated number of planned charter
flights, including departures from regional airports, is expected to
be approximately 1200 flights (600round-trips), 66.6% of which will
be served from Tokyo Haneda, representing more than half of the total
number of charter flights for FY2008.
Mainly attributed to the substantial increase will be, as JAL
comments, the Haneda/ Hong Kong charter flights starting from July 1
this summer. The airline had originally planned to operate some 280
ad-hoc charter flights from Haneda. Then, an additional charter
flight plan has come up to include about 400 flights with the
destination Hong Kong, 2 weekly flights to Incheon, Seoul from April
15, a total of 8 flights to Ulaanbaatar during the months of July and
August, 10 flights to Palau in October and 14 flights to Honolulu in
August, thus substantially increasing the number of charter flights.
In contrast, the number of charters departing from other than Haneda
will be reduced by 250 flights to approximately 400 compared to the
previous fiscal year.
In addition to package tour sales, JAL also launched both normal
and discounted fares for individual customers effective from April
25. The airline currently serves 2 daily flights between Tokyo Narita
and Hong Kong and is of the opinion that "the existing ANA's Haneda/
Hong Kong route has not brought any negative impact on part of JAL
with no change to the traffic demand. JAL's Narita/ Hong Kong flight
has different schedule from its Haneda/ Hong Kong flight, thus
expects to attract a different type of market demand." The airline is
scheduled to operate the new route with the following timing.
*JAL Charter Flight Schedule Haneda/ Hong Kong
dep. HND 20.30 arr. HKG 00.05
dep. HKG 01.20 arr. HND 06.30
Aircraft: Boeing B767-300ER (237 seats)
Mr. Yoshikawa of KNT Suggests Making Next Midterm Business Plan
Involving All Staff to Satisfy Stake Holders
Early-May 2008
Katsuhisa Yoshikawa, new president of Kinki Nippon Tourist (KNT),
said at the interview with Travel Vision that he was going to draw up
a next medium-term business plan by the end of August. He suggested
the plan would be formulated, not by a top-down approach, but with
participation of all the key staff in every division of the company.
With the view of the financial loss and non-payment of dividends
in the last fiscal year, he is eager to take an initiative to make
the company productive so that it can satisfy all the stake holders
including shareholders, employees, Japan Ryokan & Hotel Association,
partner agencies, and other suppliers.
Since the first-quarter earnings of the current fiscal year did
not come up to expectation, some say capital injection from the
parent company, Kintetsu Corp., would be inevitable. He did not
totally deny the possibility but maintained that making the best use
of the own management resources should be the first consideration.
When the company is in need of extra funds, he said, the management
must decide on the best option from bank loan, bond issuance, or
capital infusion from the parent company.
Mr. Yoshikawa acknowledges that three divisions of the company,
namely, ECC (event, convention, congress-related business),
e-business (online sales), and International Division (inbound
travel), are the fast growing sectors, to which KNT's resources
should be allocated intensively.
He emphasized at the same time that the company is so far
successful in trimming the secondary business of travel and
concentrating on travel agency business itself. In fact, it divested
last year two subsidiaries of Hakone Kogen Hotel and Hokko Daiwa
Taxi, and three other subsidiaries including Oku-Nikko Kogen Hotel
became equity method affiliates and therefore ceased to be
consolidated from this year.
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