Hawaii island’s tourism industry celebrated Friday as Hawaiian Airlines announced that there will once again be a direct flight linking Tokyo and Kona.

The U.S. Department of Transportation approved Hawaiian Airlines’ application to serve Kona three times a week and add a flight to Honolulu four days a week from Haneda airport in Tokyo. Hawaiian will start the new routes no later than Jan. 29. Hawaiian has one daily flight between Haneda and Honolulu.

The last direct flight between Japan and Kona was in October 2010 when Japan Airlines ended the Kona service and many other routes. The cutbacks were made in conjunction with the company’s government-backed bankruptcy restructuring. Japan Airlines had offered the daily flight between Tokyo’s Narita airport and the Big Island since June 1996 — the only direct flight linking Japan and the Big Island.

Mark Dunkerley, Hawaiian’s president and CEO, said the Kona route will generate $35 million in visitor spending and $12.5 million in wages and benefits.

“Flights between Hawaii and Japan are the most traveled and most beneficial to the U.S. economy, so being able to expand the number that we can offer to Tokyo’s Haneda airport is especially important,” Dunkerley said.

Hawaii County Mayor Billy Kenoi said he was thrilled Hawaiian Airlines’ route was approved because of the ties the Big Island’s economy has to tourism.

“Our economy is uniquely tied to air service,” Kenoi said in a statement. “Thousands of our working families depend on the visitor industry, not only at resorts and hotels, but also at attractions, activities, restaurants, and retailers. This is great news for our state, and especially for Hawaii Island.”

Kenoi was one of the state officials who flew to Japan in 2010 to lobby Japan Airlines to keep the direct flight.

Ross Birch, executive director of the Big Island Visitors Bureau, said the flight will provide significant economic impact.

“Hawaii Island is the second most favored of the Japanese visitor next to Oahu,” Birch said. “We get more visitors to this island from Japan than Maui and Kauai combined. Now with the direct access we can definitely foresee our arrival numbers increasing immensely from the Japan market and even other markets connecting through Japan.”

Birch said the next step is to put a customs facility back in place at Kona International Airport, now that the route is confirmed for the fall.

“We’ve got about six months to really ramp up and do what we need to do on the Kona side to get customs in place,” Birch said.

Birch said the Department of Transportation and regional customs representatives are reviewing the facility.

“We’ve been slowly getting things organized,” Birch said. “You can’t have customs unless you have flights coming in.”

Kirstin Kahaloa, executive director of the Kona-Kohala Chamber of Commerce, said that the chamber and small businesses wrote letters in support of Hawaiian Airlines’ application, noting the loss of the direct flight in 2010 was hard for the community.

“It was really disruptive for our economy and the community,” Kahaloa said. “We’re just elated this is coming back to fruition. … Every family in the community touches the visitor industry in some way.”

The approved Haneda flights will depart from and land in Tokyo at night.

Business travelers generally prefer Haneda because it is about 10 miles from downtown Tokyo, while Narita is about 40 miles away. Haneda also can be desirable for some leisure travelers but generally is more expensive than U.S. flights to Narita. Haneda’s arrival and departure times have been inconvenient because Haneda has restricted long-haul flights to off-peak hours so that they arrive and take off late at night.

The DOT must still decide which five of eight remaining applications by four U.S. air carriers for daytime slots at Haneda it will approve. The slots were opened as part of a February agreement between the U.S. and Japanese governments. Hawaiian has asked that its existing daily Honolulu-Haneda service be among those five.

“Securing the daytime slots for our existing Honolulu-Haneda route will optimize these scarce route rights, since no other application comes close to providing the benefits to the community, travelers and the economy when compared to our already successful service started six years ago,” Dunkerley said.