By Giff Johnson
For Variety

MAJURO — Japan Airlines officials are planning a big increase in the number of charter flights to the Marshall Islands despite initial problems that forced cancellation of planned service for April and May.
With more than 190 Japanese tourists here in Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, this weekend on the second JAL charter in two months, virtually every hotel room in this small atoll is booked out.
“We’ve had no problem selling the Majuro charter flights,” said Koji Mochizuki, JAL’s manager of International Sales Planning and Marketing, on Saturday in Majuro. “We had 50 people on the waiting list for this week’s flight. There is high demand for visitors to come to Majuro.” He said that Japanese who have already visited other Pacific islands such as Guam, Saipan and Palau are looking for a new island destination to experience.
Mochizuki said in an interview that JAL’s plan is to develop Majuro as the airline did Palau. “We started with three charters to Palau in 1995,” he said. “This year, we’ll have 70.”
JAL aims to increase the charters to Majuro to15-to-20 by 2008, Mochizuki said. “I hope that we can get to 70 flights a year like Palau,” he said.
But the JAL charter service launch has had its teething problems: the government’s Ports Authority didn’t deliver ground handling equipment for JAL’s Boeing-767 as promised, and the airline needed approval for alternative airstrip landing at the nearby U.S. Army’s Kwajalein missile testing range to meet safety requirements.
U.S. Ambassador to the Marshall Islands Clyde Bishop said in an interview that both he and Army missile range commander Col. Stevenson Reed went to bat for JAL with officials at the Pentagon, emphasizing the economic importance of the new JAL charter service to secure the special authorization for JAL.
JAL is a “significant economic shot in the arm to the Marshall Islands,” Bishop said. “We want to contribute to the possibility of it continuing.”
After promising the ground handling equipment in early February, the Ports Authority now says it will arrive at the end of April.
Mochizuki said JAL had to cancel planned charters in April and May because of the equipment issue. JAL spent $70,000 to ship ground handling equipment from Japan to the Marshall Islands, but has to return it after the JAL flight leaves Majuro on Monday.
JAL is now looking at a late-June charter, with another in July and then two each in August and September to make up for the two that were bumped from the schedule for April and May, he said.
Nearly all of the Japanese making the five-day visit to Majuro are scuba divers, according to Marshall Islands Resort general manager Bill Weza.
With just three hotels and a total of about 160 rooms, the charters are maxing out hotel space. Mochizuki said JAL is limiting the number of passengers to around 190 instead of filling the Boeing-767 to its 237 seat capacity on the first few charters in part because of the limited hotel space and also because Majuro tourist operators are not yet used to the “deluge” that the 190 visitors is producing over their short five-day stay.
With fewer than 2,000 tourists visiting this isolated central Pacific nation annually, JAL’s charter service is expected to double that number by the end of its first 12 months of operations.
“Every aspect of the Majuro community is touched economically by JAL’s charters,” said Weza, whose hotel handles more than half of the Japanese visitors.