By Gerardo R. Partido
Variety News Staff

ANY chance that Japan Airlines may resume regular flights to the CNMI or increase its flights to Guam appear to have been dashed by the release this week of the airline’s latest quarterly financial report, which showed a net loss of $89.9 million.
The “stagnant” tourism demand for travel to Guam and Hawaii was one of the factors cited by the airline for its poor performance.
When Japan Airlines chairman Toshiyuki Shinmachi visited Guam last October, he promised that JAL would increase the frequency of its flights to Guam as soon as the airline finishes its restructuring and becomes stronger.
But that is now unlikely because of the airline’s continuing financial problems and its new strategy of concentrating on more charter flights.
Instead of resuming or launching new regular flights, JAL announced last week that it would be promoting its charter flight business. For fiscal year 2007, JAL said it will operate about 800 charter flights, an increase of about 100 flights or 13 percent.
In adopting the new strategy, JAL said it is counting on cutting costs through shorter flight times and the elimination of connection flights and flying direct from various parts of Japan, all of which would take more time on scheduled flights.
Although JAL’s Guam office said it has not yet received directives from the mother company to lay off people, the latest quarterly report of the airline has prompted JAL to announce an 8 percent workforce reduction throughout the company, making the possibility of raising the frequency of flights to Micronesia increasingly remote.
JAL has been suffering from financial problems due to a variety of factors, including skyrocketing fuel costs. Although the airline has managed to trim its losses, it has had to implement route reductions.
In 2005, JAL decided to pull out all of its Osaka and Tokyo flights to Saipan, costing the CNMI about 182,000 airline seats representing about 45 percent of the commonwealth’s seat capacity.
Despite JAL’s continuing losses, the Guam Visitors Bureau remains hopeful that the airline would continue to maintain a significant presence on Guam.
Guam did not suffer as much as Saipan because JAL only cut its flights from Nagoya.