Smoke-Free Planes Sought in Japan

Friday, January 5th 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

TOKYO (AP) â€” The new president of a struggling domestic airline says he wants to make his planes smoke-free just one month after the company restored smoking seats to boost sales, a spokeswoman said Friday.

Michimasu Ishiko, soon-to-be president of Hokkaido International Airlines, said at a New Year's party that the carrier ``can't go against the nonsmoking trend,'' spokeswoman Chinami Sugisaka said.

The airline, more familiarly known as Air Do, was flooded by angry e-mails from anti-smoking groups when it announced in November that it would revoke its in-flight smoking ban, Sugisaka said.

But the company will study how big an economic boost the smoking seats have given the airline, which operates a route between Tokyo and the northern main island of Hokkaido, before making a decision, she said.

About 20 percent of the airline's passengers have requested smoking seats since the ban was lifted in December, she said.

Most of the protests came before Air Do allotted a quarter of seats on each of its two planes to customers who cannot bear to fly without a smoke. No passengers have since complained about the new smoking policy, she said.

Hokkaido has the nation's highest smoking rate.

Since price competition on the route between Tokyo and the Hokkaido capital of Sapporo was liberalized last year, Air Do has been able to fill only about half the seats on its six daily round-trip flights.

That contrasts with an 80 percent occupancy rate when the fledgling airline took to the skies in 1998.

Ishiko, who used to smoke but has now quit, will formally take over the helm of Air Do early this year, Sugisaka said.