You mean like Texas? ;)

Nooooo, don't get those Texans started! :D

Northwest in Japanese eyes......
 

Many Japanese travelers view Northwest as the second tier carriers to ANA and JAL. While price will lure some customer, most will prefer the Japanese carriers over any foreign carriers. Decisions are really decided on loyalty, service reputation and language barrier.

I'm surprised with this NW move. With travel agents commission likely luring some business to NW, this elimination will have devastating effects, in my opinion......until maybe when DL takes over. DL may need to reinstate NW's commission removal.

Jiburi

I keep thinking about this, somehow I have a feeling that the "new"
DL is not so keen about the NRT hub. So I am not sure if reinstating
the/a commission is in the DL planning. Also DL is a complete unknown
here in Japan. Historically they have never done anything to promote
their flight. Although I have not called them recently, they did not
even have a Japanese callcenter before, I ended up in India. Good
luck to all of us in Japan and Asia, once this merger goes thru.

This is the conventional wisdom, but I don't think it necessarily holds true. There are many people in Japan who will gladly pay premiums for a better (or at least apparently better) product. There are many others who shop intensely for good prices, and their numbers have grown over the last couple of decades as the economy has tanked, stagnated and stumbled around. Nowadays online shopping is huge for products of all kinds, and the convenience factor is getting to be more important to many consumers.

I reckon the travel agents' days are numbered here; pretty soon, everyone's just going to buy their tickets on Rakuten. (Aside: The borderline fraudulent practice of advertising fares without tax and fuel surcharges hasn't won many fans, as countless TV programs have demonstrated...)

Maybe we are talking about different things here. Travel out of Japan on
other than Japanese carriers is primarely all inclusive travel, vacation trips
within the regular Japanese time frames of 3-7 days. Point-to-Point travel,
biz tickets probably will have no problem migrating to NWA.com. But that's
not the majority of travel out of Japan on NWA, or any other carrier besides
NH/JL.

I don't know if they would reinstate the commission. I think once it's gone you're never getting the Travel Agents back. I think JAL and ANA will take this opportunity get more pax.

However, DL has plans for NRT. They are already talking about adding SLC-NRT post merger.

Agreed. If I was a business traveler I'd have little reason to consider NW. Product wise JAL and ANA are light years ahead. What seems to be left is leisure travel.

Let me address both quickly. First off the business traveler mention is completely on target. That then will include this planned SLC flight, which
for any non-U.S. based traveler is completely useless. And again, I think while DL may consider adding flights to NRT, I m not sure if the NRT hub situation remains as is. UA is slowly dismantling theirs.

I'm curious - what is the meaning of the regular time frames of 3-7 days. I don't know anything about Japanese travel patterns, so I was wondering what this meant! Thanks!

Japanese usually go on vacation trips for a much shorter period
than we are used to in the west. Three days means a two night
stay, seven days a six night stay. These tours are usually guided
with little personal time left. My wife still cannot get used to going
somewhere for a two, three or even four week period:D

+1

3 days seems like a big deal considering the work week for most of Japan is 6 days.

That is absolutely correct! And for most it's not an eight-hour-day either.

By 'west' you mean western Europe, then. Few Americans do three or four week continous vacations, even among the FlyerTalk crowd.

Package deals predominated in the UK and Germany, too, until LCCs and internet bookings came along. TAs will be toast except at the very high end.

As you can see from my signature I used to work at the "old" PANAM, so I
am retired now; without time restraints;)

Boy, I wish we would get an LCC out of Japan. Oasis was a far off hope, they
are gone. And for internet bookings for AIT you still always end up with a TA.
But that's not bad. We had a three day trip all inclusive to TPE for the equivalent of $295.00 p.p., with the flight on CX ( posted on the web at over $1200.00 r/t for the ticket alone).

While this may be true, I suspect NW has the loyalty of a small but significant following of Japanese (frequent travellers). I always see quite a few in the lounge for flights to Asia and to HNL (long after the U.S. mainland flights have left) and in the WBC cabin. Probably those who can read English (the quality of written English of Japanese university graduates is surprisingly very high and much better than that of native-born U.S. native English speakers) and have no qualms over using the internet for travel arrangements.