TokyoTomo Travel Guide

ANA Group will expand its network from Narita and Tokyo’s Haneda airports, capitalizing on further expansion of the metropolitan airports in 2010 as the airline sees it as the biggest business opportunity to expand. All Nippon Airways announced on January 27 its corporate plan for fiscal year 2010. Positioning its international flight operations as a main pillar for its growth, the airline endeavors to expand its international network from Narita with transit traffic demand including long-haul flights and also from Tokyo’s Haneda with international passengers originating in Japan, making use of the respective airport characteristics. Three routes from Osaka’s Kansai airport will be suspended or reduced. The system-wide number of international passenger flights will, however, be increased by 14.8 percent, bringing the airline an increase of 11.2 percent in terms of available seat kilometers (ASK).

From Narita, ANA will introduce a new route Narita/Munich starting from July 1 this year. The airline currently operates a three-weekly Narita/Shenyang service and a four-weekly Narita/Hangzhou service. With the expansion of departure and arrival slots at Narita from March 28, these two Chinese destinations will be served daily. ANA’s public relations office said that both routes show a remarkable traffic growth. In fact, after JAL suspended some of its routes including Narita/Hangzhou, there came requests from the customers for the frequency increase for those destinations. The Narita/Ho Chin Minh City route will also be increased to daily operations from the current five weekly flights. With the increased code-sharing flights with IBEX Airlines, ANA intends to improve its feeder service to Narita International Airport.

From Tokyo’s Haneda, ANA will start a new service to Taipei’s Songshan, operating two flights daily from October 31 this year. The airline presently serves Soul’s Gimpo from Haneda as a scheduled charter flight, but will change to its regular service with 3 daily flights. It will also increase the frequency of the Haneda/Beijing and Haneda/Shanghai’s Hongqiao services, doubling daily flights. Its Haneda/Hong Kong flight will be operated also daily with a schedule change to a morning departure from Haneda.

Also, from Haneda, ANA is considering starting services to the West Coast of USA and to Southeast Asia. The airline expects to inaugurate long-haul routes to Europe and to the East Coast of USA from Haneda during fiscal year 2011 after it takes delivery of the Boeing B787 Dreamliner with ANA’s international flight specs.

Meanwhile, ANA’s three routes from Osaka’s Kansai will be either suspended or reduced in frequency. As from March 28, the airline will pull out of both the Kansai/Gimpo route and the Kansai/Xiamen route while it will reduce the frequency of the Kansai/Qingdao service from the current seven weekly flights to four. ANA public relations office commented that although it is a fact that in the Kansai region, passenger traffic demand remains stagnated, the route suspension and flight reduction planned at Kansai is mainly due to aircraft rotation needed to cover the increased flights at Narita. ANA is scheduled to retire its entire fleet of Boring B747-400 (international) within fiscal year 2010 in order to improve the route productivity.

Regarding the domestic passenger flight operations, which is ANA’s core business, the airline plans to enhance the routes from and to Haneda and will also address the route restructuring within Hokkaido. During the period running from August 1 to October 31, ANA is scheduled to increase the frequency of the Haneda/Okinawa service and also considers starting to operate the Haneda/Tokushima route.

Source: Travel Vision

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