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Delta Air Lines will review the viability of its flights from Portland to Japan in the next year, and may discontinue them because of poor financial performance. If so, the airport's fourth-busiest carrier may also scale back its transcontinental domestic flights, which feed the Asia routes.
Delta says the Japan flights aren't meeting revenue targets and their future will be evaluated within the next 10 months. Potentially, the airline says, that review could result in the cancellation of Delta's intercontinental service to and from Portland.
"It could," said David Zielke, Delta's district sales manager in Portland. "We're hoping it won't. Our focus is on the solution side ride now, not on the cancellation side."
Delta says its Portland-to-Japan routes have suffered from continued economic weakness in Asia. New direct routes connecting Asian cities with more American airports have also depleted international traffic through Portland, and Zielke says the publicity from the recent immigration dispute made a bad situation worse.
"We're not seeing the revenue generated on the flights that hits the targets that we set so we can get a fair return on the investment," Zielke said. "We are certainly aggressively using every opportunity we can to get the revenue levels back to the levels we would like to see on these flights."
Delta began offering direct flights between Portland and Tokyo in 1987 and later expanded its trans-Pacific service to include other Japanese cities and South Korea. Service was scaled it back last year due to the downturn in the Asian economy, and routes to South Korea and one Japanese...