Jetstar Airways to cancel 31 of its flights to Japan in June 2009

Jetstar Airways, the low-fare carrier based in Melbourne, Australia, has said that it would cancel 31 of its flights to Japan – which is nearly one-third of its total flights – in June 2009. The airline cited “significant softening” of passenger loads amidst fears of swine flu as the reason for cancelling its Japan flights.

However, Jetstar Airways said in a statement that it remained “committed to the Japanese market” despite the decision to cancel almost a third of its flights to Japan.

Jetstar Airways, a subsidiary of Qantas Airways, the flag-carrier airline of Australia, at present operates 21 return flights a week to Japan.

The Australian quoted a spokesman of Jetstar Airways as saying that more cutbacks in flights were likely to follow if conditions did not get better.

Simon Westaway, the spokesman, told the newspaper, “Initially, we were seeing a lot of school-group cancellations, but it is now transferring through to Japanese nationals of any background or persuasion.”

The media quoted Matthew Hingerty, managing director of Australian Tourism Export Council, as saying that Australia’s $26-billion inbound tourism industry had already taken a hit by the “swine-flu outbreak hysteria,” with a perceptible drop in Japanese tourist groups.

Hingerty said that Australia’s tourism business felt the initial impact of the fall in tourism when the number of Japanese school groups visiting Australia declined, adding that “this has now spilled over to the mainstream Japanese markets.”

He said that no one had so far died from swine flu in Australia, but over 3,000 Australians die from influenza every year.

Jetstar Airways – which said that it had “invested heavily” in Japan – operates flights twice daily to Tokyo, once out of Cairns and once out of the Gold Coast, as well as a daily Gold Coast-Osaka flight, using wide-body Airbus A330 aircraft.

The airline said in the statement that it would consolidate flights to Tokyo on some days to fly the Gold Coast-Cairns-Narita (Tokyo) route, rather than direct from the Gold Coast to Tokyo.

Jetstar Airways said it also would cut its Gold Coast-Osaka services.