Jetstar Japan on Wednesday became the latest low cost carrier to announce a cancellation of flights.
The airline will cancel 101 flights between June 3 and June 11, TBS reported. However, unlike other budget airlines Peach Aviation and Vanilla Air which have had to cancel flights due to a shortage of pilots, Jetstar said the reason for its canceled flights was because fuselage maintenance did not go as planned at Kansai International Airport.
Jetstar said it will issue refunds to and transfer approximately 2,800 customers onto other airline flights during the suspension period.
Peach has canceled up to 2,128 flights through October, while Vanilla Air is cutting 154 flights — around a third of its domestic schedule — for June.
© Japan Today
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JeffLee
That's quite an excuse.
HokkaidoKuma
A bit off topic but this confuses me. Your company had to cancel that many flights because you don't have enough pilots? Did they all go on strike or something? Or is this a cover story for something else going on?
Lidolani
HokkaidoKuma - There are a couple of things happening here. One is that demographically the pool of pilots is aging and so more are retiring. The other is that the SDF cancelled a pilot placement service in 2009. Under that program the SDF would encourage their pilots who were in their forties to shift over to airlines and would help to place them. This was so that the SDF could have younger pilots for front line duty. In view of the airline pilot shortages happening now the SDF will reinstate their pilot placement program sometime this year.
This shortage will continue to worsen however due to the demographics and is expected to reach 9,000 by 2030. (According to Japan Times March 2, 2014).
Cos
Yes, that covers canceling flights they won't make enough money on as not enough tickets were sold. Offer much to big for the low demand. But the staff shortage issue does exist because airlines don't bother to hire and train new pilots (they want cheap part-times that arrive already trained and whose contracts can be canceled when plains are not full... to save $$).
Cortes Elijah
Maybe they should hire Gaijin to fly those SDF planes...