Japan Airlines will cut its Haneda-Komatsu route to four round trips a day, reversing a decision to keep flight numbers up on the Ishikawa route. The company had held six daily round trips while rival All Nippon Airways cut its own service to two.
Mitsuko Toriike, JAL's president, told a meeting of management and labor union representatives at the company's headquarters on November 27 last year that keeping the route at six was her call. Union representatives asked her about the decision at the meeting, which dealt with worsening domestic route earnings.
“The earthquake has not been resolved. I asked myself whether it is right to cut flights thinking only of the balance sheet. It is easy to say, but not something you can do right away.”Mitsuko Toriike, JAL president
She was referring to the Noto Peninsula earthquake, which struck Ishikawa Prefecture. About eight and a half months after that meeting, JAL dropped its policy of maintaining flight numbers and settled on four round trips a day.
A joint campaign with the prefectural government to promote use of the route, and a bonus-mile campaign, failed to lift demand to the airline's revenue target. Direct appeals from Governor Yoshinobu Yamano to Toriike did not keep the flights.
The four-hour wall
On short domestic routes, the shinkansen sets the terms. JAL and ANA compete with rail on journey time, and the roughly four-hour trip by bullet train from Tokyo to the Hokuriku region marks the point at which flying stops paying.
Domestic flying, which has supported Japan's airline industry, is at a turning point. Major carriers are effectively running losses on domestic routes, and JAL and ANA are moving toward cooperation with each other.