Hawaiian cuts route to Sendai amid low demand

Hawaiian Airlines, which has been hurt by a weak yen on its Japan routes, is dropping service to Sendai at the end of September after seeing a lack of growth in that market.

The discontinuation of the Sendai route marks the fourth international destination that the state’s largest carrier has eliminated in the last two years after aggressively expanding abroad. The thrice-weekly Sendai service is currently part of a triangular route that also includes Sapporo, Japan and Honolulu.

Hawaiian, which announced the change Monday only in Japan, plans now to make Sapporo a nonstop route both ways beginning Oct. 1 in Honolulu and Oct. 2 in Sapporo. Under the triangular configuration, Hawaiian has been flying nonstop to Sendai before proceeding to Sapporo and then returning to Honolulu.

The Sapporo-Honolulu route began as a nonstop both ways when it was initiated by Hawaiian in October 2012. But when Hawaiian added Sendai in June 2013, the Sapporo route became nonstop only from Sapporo to Honolulu.

"We added Sendai to our existing nonstop service to Sapporo two years ago in order to provide convenient access to Hawaii for the people of Sendai and Tohoku region," said Takaya Shishido, Hawaiian Airlines’ country director for Japan. "Unfortunately, despite two years of solid efforts, we have not seen sufficient passenger growth to justify continuing this three-way route."

Hawaiian, which uses a 264-seat Boeing 767-300ER aircraft on the triangular route, for the first 11 months last year on the Honolulu-Sendai leg filled 23 percent to 42 percent of its available seats on a monthly basis with the overall average being 35 percent, according to the latest available data from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

For the Sapporo-Honolulu leg, Hawaiian filled 53 percent to 86 percent of its available seats monthly, with the overall average being 70 percent.

Hawaiian’s final flight from Honolulu to Sendai will be Sept. 29. The last flight from Sendai to Honolulu, with a stopover in Sapporo, is set for Sept. 30. Passengers with Sendai reservations after Sept. 30 will be placed on other flights. The airline will continue to accept reservations for travel between Honolulu and Sendai prior to Sept. 30.

Last year, Hawaiian dropped service to Taipei and Fukuoka, Japan, and in 2013 discontinued its flights to Manila.

Following the discontinuation of the Sendai route, Hawaiian will serve just three Japanese cities — daily service to both Tokyo (Haneda International Airport) and Osaka, and thrice-weekly service to Sapporo.

Visitors from Japan, which is Hawaii’s top international market, have been decreasing over the last year due to the weak yen. Through the first quarter of this year, Japanese arrivals were down 4.7 percent to 358,880 and Japanese spending was off 16.4 percent to $509.1 million, according to the Hawaii Tourism Authority. In 2014, Japan arrivals were down 0.5 percent from 2013 while spending was off 2.9 percent.

On Wednesday, the strengthening U.S. dollar fetched 121.16 yen compared with 101.28 a year ago.

"The weak yen has put downward pressure on dollar-based revenues," Hawaiian spokeswoman Ann Botticelli said Wednesday. "Larger markets have deeper pools of demand to offset the currency challenges. So the yen was a factor. But the main factor was that we did not see enough growth in that market to justify the continued expense of the triangular route configuration."

Hawaiian’s service between Honolulu and Sendai, the fifth-largest city in Japan, had been the first from Hawaii since 2004 when JALways, a subsidiary of Japan Airlines, left the market.