Sunday, January 12, 2014

Star Flyer to add ANA's code on all flights.

Star Flyer (7G/SFJ) will code-share with All Nippon Airways (NH/ANA) on all three of their new daily Fukuoka (FUK/RJFF) - Nagoya/Chubu Centrair (NGO/RJGG) flights, which will be launched on March 30th. This will result in the carrier code-sharing with ANA on all of its flights.
Star Flyer's Airbus A320-214 JA08MC at Fukuoka in October 2013. (Photo: Ryosuke Yano)

In November, Star Flyer announced that fiscal year 2013 will likely result in at least a 1.74 billion JPY loss, forcing the carrier to restructure its operations. Its system-wide load factor from April through September was 63.8%. As a result, they are axing the four-times daily Osaka/Kansai (KIX/RJBB) - Fukuoka (FUK/RJFF) service after February 19th as well as their double-daily Kitakyushu (KKJ/RJFR) - Busan/Gimhae (PUS/RKPK) route, their sole international service, after March 29th. Two additional Airbus A320-200s will be returned to lessors, which would bring the fleet down to nine. Its eight executives took 15-30% salary cuts, and the company is looking for 30 voluntary retirements. Meanwhile, it will start placing ANA's code on all of its 10 Tokyo/Haneda (HND/RJTT) - Fukuoka round-trips on February 1st. ANA Holdings owns 17.26% of Star Flyer.

One of a handful of carriers born after de-regulation, Star Flyer tried to operate high-quality service from its hub at Kitakyushu with Airbus A320s equipped with audio-visual-on-demand (AVOD) at every seat and accommodating only 144 passengers. However, instead of carving out a niche, it will soon be not much more than a feeder carrier for ANA, as is the case with AIRDO (HD/ADO) (d.b.a. Air Do) and Skynet Asia Airways (6J/SNJ) (d.b.a. Solaseed Air). ANA is decreasing service on the Chubu Centrair - Fukuoka route from nine to six after Star Flyer commences the route.

Source: Yomiuri Shimbun (in Japanese)

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