American Airlines is reducing the number of flights to Japan as travel demand to the country continues to fall. The airline said it will suspend two of its six daily flights to Japan from April 6. This news follow moves by other international airlines such as Qantas and Delta to reduce capacity to Japan. American Airlines did not specify how far of its traffic on the Japan – US route has fallen since the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan’s north-east coast, but it is known that Cathay Pacific had at one point two weeks ago near-empty aircraft going to Japan and traffic has continued to fall dramatically since then.
The routes being temporarily suspended are from New York to Tokyo’s Haneda Airport and from Dallas to Tokyo’s Narita Airport.
Earlier this week, Japan’s national carrier Japan Airlines (JAL) announced that passenger numbers on its international routes had fallen 25% since 11 March.
Irish passenger traffic is also falling rapidly due to domestic economic reasons and we are now seeing reports from travel agents in the UK that summer holiday bookings are well down on 2010 levels thus far as people save cash amid high inflation.
China, the indestructible driver of the economic growth across the globe, is also showing signs that its airlines are in the midst of a rough patch. Fuel prices and currency levels are conspiring to heavily cut back airline profits for this current quarter.
Amid all of this rebalancing the US airlines continue to look strong and any ticket increases from this point matched with further consolidation and route cuts will only compound that strength. The US airlines, having seen shares cut back slightly due to the problems in Japan, are starting to show real value.