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ANA Group Announces Network Planning FY2008, Emphasizing Tokyo
Metropolitan Airport Expansion and Priority on China Market February 2008
The ANA Group released on January 23 its international operations
plan for the fiscal year 2008. With an aim to become Asia's Number
One Airline, as defined in its corporate objectives for the first
year of the mid-term corporate strategy 2008-2011, ANA will strive
not only to promote a corporate vision of "Value Creation" reflecting
the customer needs, but also build on the corporate strategy to be
fully ready for the capacity expansion of the Tokyo metropolitan
airports in 2010.
ANA focuses its international operation noticeably on the China
route. Under the Asian Gateway Initiative, the airline plans to
operate daily scheduled charter flights from Tokyo Haneda to Hong
Kong from April 1 and probably by July also to Beijing Nanyuan
airport. Weekly frequency from Osaka Kansai to Qingdao in China will
be increased by 4 flights to a daily service and to Dalian, China by
3 flights also to a daily service from March 30 and June 1
respectively.
The newest Boeing B737-700 aircraft will be introduced on the
Kansai/ Hangzhou route from June 1. Commenting on the recent strategy
focusing on the China market, the ANA public relations office
explained, "The airline has continued to concentrate on destinations
that bring robust demand and a higher unit price, considering the
maximum utilization of the available take-off and landing slots."
Although the traffic demand for China declined during the second
half of 2007, yet ANA indicated its expectation for vibrant demand
from China as well as from Japan saying, "China has many prominent
business destinations and, on top of it, Beijing's Olympic Games held
this year will be attracting many people to China. The country has a
big population with such a huge market potential."
In order to enhance the foreseen competitiveness following the
capacity expansion of take-off and landing slots in the metropolitan
area airports in 2010, ANA is ready to start to build up a ground to
strengthen its "network carrier business" model. Code-sharing and
revision of the schedules are considered as the main strategy. From
April 1, for example, the airline will operate its Taipei route in
code-sharing agreement with United Airlines under the flight number
of ANA.
With an aim of revamping the organizational structure to enhance
the operating efficiencies while ensuring the customer conveniences,
the airline continues to pursue flight operations in code-sharing
agreements with other airlines and even implies, as the case may be,
to suspend some of the flights on its own.
The airline also tries to improve onward connectivity with
domestic flights from the regional airports. ANA expects that these
strategies will bring the airline an increase of 6.2% in terms of the
number of international passenger flights or an increase of 1.4% in
terms of available seat kilometers (ASK) during FY2008.
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