THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
December 24, 2024 at 16:18 JST
The Queen Beetle high-speed ferry heads for Nagasaki on a limited-time domestic service run on Aug. 11, 2022. (Eiji Hori)
A high-speed ferry service connecting Fukuoka and Busan, South Korea, will be discontinued after the route was suspended and JR Kyushu Jet Ferry Inc. came under fire for covering up water leakage.
The company will end over three decades of service after safety concerns forced it to abandon plans to resume operations.
“Even after repairs, the risk of cracks forming in the vessel’s hull could not be entirely eliminated,” said Yoji Furumiya, president of Kyushu Railway Co. (JR Kyushu), which owns JR Kyushu Jet Ferry, on Dec. 23.
The service has been suspended since August after it was revealed that JR Kyushu Jet Ferry falsified records to conceal water leakage on its custom-made Queen Beetle ship.
JR Kyushu plans to liquidate the Kyushu Jet Ferry subsidiary and reassign about 70 employees to other subsidiaries.
The liquidation process will begin after the ongoing investigation by the Fukuoka Coast Guard Office into the company’s cover-up is complete.
The Queen Beetle made its debut in November 2022, replacing the Beetle, a hydrofoil jetfoil launched in 1991.
The Queen Beetle was constructed by Austal, an Australia-based shipbuilder.
The trimaran vessel is made of lightweight aluminum alloy to achieve high speeds and a large carrying capacity.
Despite attempts to repair a crack in the starboard side weld, experts concluded that the vessel’s design, particularly its sharp bow, made it difficult to prevent leaks completely.
The decision to scrap the 5.7 billion yen ($36 million) vessel after just four years of service is a significant loss for JR Kyushu.
As the ship was built to the company’s original specifications and the one-year warranty had expired, it is unlikely that Austal can be held responsible for the defect.
Furumiya stated that he believes the decision to custom order the ship was justified at the time.
Although the high-speed vessel can make the journey between the two cities in under four hours, it has faced increasing competition from budget airlines and other ferry services linking Busan with Japanese ports.
(This article was written by Satoru Eguchi and Daisuke Hatano.)
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