Preclearance for Narita aids isles’ airports

Knowing that Japanese visitors comprise Hawaii’s largest international tourism market — and 18 percent of all travelers into our state — the opening of a new gateway offers dynamic possibilities.

In a welcome move, the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) unit is seeking to expand its preclearance program into Japan’s Narita International Airport, one of 10 airports to be added to 15 other preclearance venues in six countries.

This would allow visitors from Japan to clear customs and immigration in Narita, before boarding the plane bound for Hawaii.

It would create faster, more traveler-friendly processing for international visitors — airport preclearance cut average wait times by 13 percent at the top 10 airlines last year — and any security problems would be handled at the departure site.

This would be significant for Hawaii, where Honolulu International Airport is our island state’s sole Customs site. All foreign arrivals must cycle through bustling Honolulu, which precludes nonstop flights to any neighbor island from international hubs such as Tokyo’s Haneda and Narita airports.

Narita airport’s designation as a preclearance site would enable Hawaii’s neighbor island airports to accept direct flights from Tokyo, specifically — but more widely, from a larger network of Asia flights that connect via Narita. And this opens up new growth and strategic opportunities for Hawaii tourism.

According to the Hawaii Tourism Authority, 1.5 million Japanese visitors came here in 2014, spending $2.5 billion. Clearly, this is a segment well worth tending.

Also telling is that more than half of them — 58.5 percent — are repeat visitors. As has been shown with Hawaii’s repeat visitors from the mainland, especially those from the West Coast, seasoned travelers seek new experiences outside Honolulu; some bypass Oahu altogether in favor of a neighbor island.

In December 2012, the federal CBP unit stopped operations in Kona, partly due to the outdated airport. The state so far has been unsuccessful in its request for a Customs exemption while the airport gets modernized.

So, all travelers coming from Japan must make the mandatory Customs stop at Honolulu International Airport. The Narita preclearance stands to lift that limitation and would enable travelers to fly directly from there into Kona — something government leaders have sought for years — and that, in turn, would produce significant trickle-down benefits for Hawaii island’s hotels and other tourism-related businesses.

Much would be gained: When Hawaiian Airlines in January applied (unsuccessfully) for a direct route from Japan’s Haneda airport to Kona, it calculated 39,000 additional visitors resulting in 1,150 new jobs and $65 million in new direct spending.

"I am pleased that we are seeking negotiations with 10 new airports in nine countries," U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said last week about the preclearance expansion. "I want to take every opportunity we have to push our homeland security out beyond our borders so that we are not defending the homeland from the one-yard line. Preclearance is a win-win for the traveling public. It provides aviation and homeland security, and it reduces wait times upon arrival at the busiest U.S. airports."

This makes perfect sense for an island state like Hawaii. Instead of bottlenecking all foreign arrivals at Honolulu’s airport, preclearing many of our Japanese visitors for customs and security at their point of departure would be wholly more efficient — and would create a new flight pattern to benefit our state’s tourism economy.