Hokkaido International Airlines, Japan's new domestic carrier, is finalising its fleet plans as it aims to start in April 1998.
The airline has signed a letter of intent with Ansett Worldwide Aviation Services for the lease of a Boeing 767-300ER, to be delivered in February. It has also signed a tentative contract with Parc Aviation, an Irish crew lease company, to hire ten crew.
The airline will operate from Tokyo's Haneda and Sapporo airports. A second aircraft is to be added in mid-1998 to enable services to be expanded to include two daily flights between Osaka's Itami Airport and Sapporo.
A third aircraft could be introduced in early 2000 to take advantage of the allocation of a further slot at Haneda from March 2000.
Meanwhile, the airline says that it will boost its capitalisation in three steps from the current ´54.3 million ($450,000) to ´1.6 billion by the second quarter of 1998. An additional ´800 million, to finance operations, will be borrowed.
Japan Airlines, meanwhile, has confirmed that it is likely to strike a deal with Hokkaido Airlines soon over aircraft maintenance "and possibly other services, such as ground handling".
Source: Flight International
