Marianas Visitors Authority Managing Director Christopher Concepcion
THE relaunching of Hong Kong Airlines’ flight service to Saipan is an exciting development for the tourism industry, Marianas Visitors Authority Managing Director Christopher Concepcion said.
“We do understand that HKA recently contacted the Commonwealth Ports Authority and informed them that they are targeting November for their flight relaunch,” Concepcion said.
In a recent meeting with HKA executives, he said MVA was informed that the relaunch has been pushed to the first quarter of next year, around the Chinese New Year period in February.
“It’s good news for the tourism industry every time an airline is going to launch or relaunch a flight service,” he said.
HKA provided direct flights to Saipan under the Guam-CNMI visa waiver program before the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We’re eager to welcome them back,” Concepcion said. “We offered our support, in terms of marketing and doing a sale seminar to warm the market up and reintroduce the destination to Hong Kong and the wider Pearl River Delta Region in mainland China.”
The population of Hong Kong is approximately 7.4 million.
“We are in close communications with HKA and we’re waiting on them to get back on us [and] from there we’ll provide them contact information for airport authority, for ground handlers, for CBP, TSA —we’ll give updates on key stakeholders that they have to deal with before they relaunch,” Concepcion said.
Hong Kong is part of China, but “they have their own passport [and] their own immigration system,” he added.
He said HKA will fly to Saipan four times a week.
“I was still here with MVA when they launched their flights to Saipan, and they kept going until Covid came…. It’s a good airline, it’s part of the Hainan group, which have other airlines throughout China, so it’s a major airline conglomerate,” he added.
The HKA flights “are not chartered, so that is good. I’m not sure what kind of aircraft they will use for the relaunch. They used to have wide bodies A330, which at that time had a 298 capacity, pre-Covid.”
