VIP Private Jet Gripes Show Japan Needs Improvement, Group Says
VIP Private Jet Gripes Show Japan Needs Improvement
Paulo Fridman/Bloomberg
A Gulfstream Aerospace Corp.
A Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. Photographer: Paulo Fridman/Bloomberg
Japan’s economy may suffer unless visiting executives such as Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs can more easily jet in and out of the country by private aircraft, said a Japanese business aviation group.
Jobs vowed never to return to Japan after he was forced to ditch ninja throwing stars found in his luggage on his way to boarding his private jet at Kansai International Airport, Japan’s SPA! magazine reported this week, citing unidentified airport officials. Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said the incidents described in SPA didn’t take place.
“Complaints from private jet passengers do happen fairly frequently,” Kazunobu Sato, vice chairman of the Japan Business Aviation Association, said in an interview yesterday in Tokyo. “The strength of Japanese businesses will slowly decline if business jet use doesn’t increase.”
Kansai, like almost all of Japan’s airports, lacks the separate facilities for private jets found at major hubs outside the country, according to the association. The gap may discourage global business leaders from coming to Japan because they have to share customs, security and baggage check facilities with commercial passengers.
Dowling called the magazine’s account “pure fiction.”
“Steve did visit Japan this summer for a vacation in Kyoto,” he said. “Steve had a great time and hopes to visit Japan again soon.”
‘Emerging Country’
“Japan is now in the earliest days of the private jet business,” Toshiro Kariya, president of Tokyo-based business jet and travel operator Askme, said in a phone interview. “Japan has a lot of airports all over the country, though I must say, in terms of private aviation overall, it is an emerging country.”
Japan, the world’s third-largest aviation market, had 55 business jets last year compared with about 17,000 worldwide, according to the association. There will be about 11,000 business jets delivered through 2019, according to the latest forecasts from Honeywell International Inc., a maker of aircraft engines and components.
“More people don’t have business jets because they fear criticism from Japanese society,” said Sato. “It’s seen as a luxury.”
Increase ‘Not Enough’
There were 648 business jet flights in and out of Haneda airport, the nation’s busiest, last year, according to figures from the association. The airport will double take-off and landing slots for private jets to eight per day next month as it aims to boost accessibility for businesses.
The increase isn’t enough and the Tokyo area needs a private jet terminal and to combine custom, immigration and quarantine procedures for private jet passengers, Sato said.
“Global businesses are increasingly flying their executives around,” Sato said.
Singapore had more than 80 business jet flights a week in the first half of this year, according to an e-mail from the island’s airport operator.
Sato’s goal is to increase business jet flights at Haneda to about 3 percent of the total, compared with his forecast for 0.6 percent after the slots are expanded next month.
There are only three airports in Japan that have separate business jet facilities, two in the Nagoya area and one in Kobe, western Japan, according to Sato.
Takeshi Uno, a spokesman at Kansai airport, said a passenger using a private jet was stopped at the end of July for carrying Ninja throwing stars and other handheld blades. The passenger, whom Uno declined to identify because of the company’s privacy policy, threw away the blades, he said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Chris Cooper in Tokyo at ccooper1@bloomberg.net; Kiyotaka Matsuda in Tokyo at kmatsuda@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Neil Denslow at ndenslow@bloomberg.net.
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