TOKYO: Reservations have remained weak for both domestic and international flights during Japan’s Golden Week holiday period amid the continuing spread of the novel coronavirus, according to data from major Japanese airlines.

Flight bookings during the holiday period from Thursday to May 5 jumped from the previous year’s Golden Week, when the first state of emergency over the epidemic was in place across the country.

The number of people who made reservations for domestic flights came to 1,111,000, up 367 percent from the year-before level, with the proportion of seats booked coming to 49.3 percent of all seats offered.

Compared with the levels during the Golden Week in 2019, before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, however, the number of reservations was down by 58.8 percent at All Nippon Airways, a unit of ANA Holdings Inc., and by 61.6 percent at Japan Airlines.

Reservations have been slow due to the application of pre-emergency measures against the coronavirus to some areas of the country, a JAL official said, adding that the company will assess the impact of a fresh state of emergency from now.

The new state of emergency will be applied to Tokyo and the western prefectures of Osaka, Kyoto and Hyogo, running from Sunday to May 11.

For international flights, reservations during this year’s Golden Week period almost doubled from a year before to 21,200. But the reservation rate went down by 6.1 percentage points to 19.4 percent, due to an increase in seats made available.

The number of reservations fell by 95.8 percent at ANA and 93.7 percent at JAL.

JIJI Press