Spring Airlines recently announced it will launch a direct service from Shanghai to Nagoya in late June. With this, its low-cost flight sevice will cover all three major cities of Japan.
Using A330 aircraft, Spring Airlines’s direct flight to Nagoya will be operated every Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday starting from June 29. Besides Shanghai, Spring Airlines also plans to connect Hefei and Harbin with Nagoya and fly Hohhot-Nagoya sevice via Shijiazhuang. The new services will boost its China-Japan routes to 20.
It is serving a total of 64 flights per week with up to 23,000 seats for the existing 15 China-Japan routes. As of the end of 2014, it had transported more than 800,000 passengers/trips on its China-Japan services, and 329,000 passengers/trips in 2014 alone.
Japan recorded 2.4 million Chinese visitor arrivals last year, a y-o-y increase of 83%, according to Japan’s official statistics. Osaka saw the number of Chinese visitors increase from 520,000 in 2013 to 1.006 million in 2014 thanks to the devaluated yen and increased flights to Kansai Airport. Spring Airline's promotional airfare as low as RMB500 has also greatly stimulated traffic on the China-Japan routes.
“The Sino-Japanese tourism market is full of great business opportunities,” a Spring Airlines market department manager said. Spring Airlines has already added five new Japanese services in March this year, linking Osaka with Chengdu, Xian, Zhengzhou and Quanzhou, and Asahikawa Hokkaido with Shanghai.
According the Japan Tourism Agency, Spring Airline’s success in Japan has even spurred a large number of competitor airlines to open services to Osaka, saturating the city’s tourism market.(Translation by David)
