Australian budget airlines Jetstar said on Friday it would cut a third of its flights between Australia and Japan in June because flu A/H1N1 had caused a sharp fall in the number of Japanese passengers on the route.

Jetstar, a subsidiary of the Australian flag carrier Qantas, was reviewing plans for July and may slash those flights as well.

Jetstar spokesman Simon Westaway said services out of the Gold Coast in Australia's northeast would be affected the most.

The airlines currently operates 21 return flights per week between Japan and Queensland's well-known coastal report of Cairns.

"While a lot of Australians are traveling to Japan ... the market is around 85 percent of Japanese nationals, so we've had to adjust our capacity to accommodate what's been quite a dramatic slip in patronage," Australian Associated Press quoted Westaway assaying.

"We're reviewing July, and it's likely we'll need to adjust capacity in July as well," he said.

A rebound in services was expected once worries over the flu eased, Westaway added.

(Xinhua News Agency May 30, 2009)