United Airlines strengthening lucrative Japan routes

More flights are being added to the all-important Guam-Japan route. As of this month, United Airlines now operates 28 flights a week from four major Japanese cities, and is also resuming service between Narita and Saipan.

United currently flies between Tokyo/Narita, Osaka/Kansai, Nagoya and Fukuoka. It relaunched the Nagoya flights on August 1, and the Fukuoka service on August 4. Sam Shinohara, United's managing director of airport operations for Asia-Pacific, said, "Quite frankly, our mission is to restore our network back to pre-pandemic levels...and so we've jumped back into the Japan market."

He says the passenger count per flight has been modest, but United is back in every city it was in prior to the pandemic and is well-positioned once bookings pick up hopefully by Japan's winter season.

"Because the Japanese government has not lifted the restrictions for inbound travel just yet it's really difficult for us to originate passengers out of Guam into those particular cities, but we're pretty bullish about what's going to be happening out of Japan in the near future, they're going through a wave right, but we feel, as United Airlines we feel like if we have a consistent schedule and if we've got an offering out on the market, we're going to have some takers," he said.

United has also ramped-up its marketing in those key cities, and Shinohara says GovGuam can also help. "One of the things that we've heard loud and clear is that the PCR test offering that the government is giving to traveling tourists into the island makes a really big difference, so that is going to be a very big part of our sales proposal to any customer coming into Guam," he shared.

"We need continued focus on making sure we're taking care of the destination. And so I think we have great plans to do big things across the island and improving the destination," he said. "But we really need  to take care of the natural beauty that Guam has to offer."

All flights use Boeing 737s. A direct weekly flight between Narita and Saipan will begin in September.