Originally Posted by AlwaysAisle

Tourists are not the only type of passengers who flies internationally. Even before the pandemic airlines considered Japan as one of lucrative destinations for airline business because Japan has a higher number of non-tourist fly on paid business and first class tickets compare with other destinations. Those non-tourist passengers have been returning slowly to Japan which is leading to an increase in the frequency of flights. As far as airlines are concerned, those non-tourists fly on paid business and first class tickets are more important to airlines than tourists. One paid first class passenger can easily equal 8-10 tourists in the economy class revenue wise. It used to be airlines could break even with passengers flying in business and first class, tourists flying in the economy class was just the icing on the cake for airlines.

Airlines will do fine with the return of business and first class paying passengers in absence of tourists in the economy. It is actually not a good situation for airlines if the situation was tourists have returned in the economy class but an absence of business and first class fare paying passengers.