More than seven months
after an earthquake and subsequent nuclear crisis stunted corporate travel to
and from Japan, airlines are seeing an uneven recovery. Demand from Japanese
points of sale mostly is back to pre-earthquake levels, but traffic from the
United States still is lagging, according to executives.
Delta Air Lines
president Ed Bastian during a Tuesday conference call with analysts and media pointed
to "steady improvements" in Japan traffic. Demand from Japan has
nearly recovered, he said, but demand from the United States remains "somewhat
weaker," with revenues down "somewhere in the 10 to 15 percent range
from where we were at pre-earthquake levels." Bastian said he expects "next
year to be a strong recovery year for us in the Japanese market."
American Airlines CFO
Bella Goren last week shared similar observations on current trends: Industrywide
demand at Japanese points of sale has "almost fully recovered," but traffic
from the United States "is down about 30 percent year over year."
Japan Airlines vice
president of passenger sales for the Americas Steve Smith told BTN the lag in demand is evident "not
just from the U.S. but from other Asian and European countries as well."
He added that some corporations have yet to lift travel restrictions imposed after
the March earthquake.
"Different
companies have reacted in different ways, but when we had the earthquake, a lot of them put a restrictive travel policy out there, where you
couldn't go to Japan at all, or if you did go you had to get senior management
approval," Smith said. "A lot of those companies still have not gone
in and redone that policy. Even though a lot of companies have opened their
policies to allow travel to Japan, they still might have a kicker in there,
where you need senior management approval."
"We're trying our
best to convince companies that travel is safe, that we haven't had anything
rear its ugly head," he added.