Thinking about international flights at Fukuoka Airport in 2020

A Happy New Year to everyone.

Today I would like to think about international flights from Fukuoka this year.

As we already know, the number of tourists from Korea drastically decreased since last September because of a political conflict between two countries. Before that they spent a lot of money in Fukuoka and some cities of Japan such as Tokyo and Osaka. According to one Japanese blog, they paid 93.9 billion yen (approximately $864 billion as of December 31, 2019) in Fukuoka per year!

So far most number of international flights at Fukuoka Airport is from Korea. They have up until now 28 flights a day. The majority of them are low-cost carriers, accounting for 90% of the total.

But on the other hand, there are not so many flights to other Asian countries. China, for example, has only seven flights per day. Most of them are to/from Shanghai. There is no direct flight to Beijing, we have to go through either Dalian or Qingdao. Surprisingly, the most amount of consumption per flight is from Hong Kong that is spending ¥14.63 billion in 2018. Although the number of tourists from the country is smaller than Korea, but they spend a lot of money during holidays. However there are only five flights flying from Fukuoka. If there is still time, the Fukuoka Airport company request to increase in number of flights to Hong Kong per day if it is possible.

As political uncertainty continues to grow in Hong Kong, it is necessary to allocate time for Southeast Asia that of Vietnam and Thailand, as well as Indonesia and Malaysia. The Fukuoka Prefectural Government wants to increase the number of travelers from these countries. I think it is worth considering.