News
American Airlines retains Haneda slot as Hawaiian adds Narita and JAL returns to Texas
December 4th 2015
American Airlines (AA) will keep its rights to fly between Los Angeles and Tokyo's Haneda Airport, after the U.S. Department of Transportation (DoT) rejected claims by the previous holder of the slot, Delta Air Lines, that it should be revoked because AA failed to begin operations quickly enough. Read More »
Following the ruling, AA has until March 27 to launch the Haneda service. The Texas headquartered carrier has said it would start the daily B787 route as early as February 11 after securing favourable slot times from Japanese officials.
"The department finds nothing on the record to suggest that, despite a brief start-up delay, the anticipated benefits of American's Los Angeles-Haneda service - benefits that led the department to award it this authority - will not be forthcoming," the DoT said in its ruling. Interestingly, regulators said the Haneda route would be awarded to Hawaiian Airlines for a new daily Haneda-Kona A330 service if AA does not meet the deadline. The spat over slots at Haneda would not exist if Japan had not limited landing rights for U.S. carriers at the downtown airport to four daily slot pairs, a Delta spokesperson has said.
Hawaiian this week announced it would increase its presence at Narita Airport with the launch of a daily A330 service to Honolulu from July 22, in addition to its Haneda, Osaka and Sapporo flights to the Hawaiian capital. Hawaiian boss, Mark Dunkerley, said Hawaiian’s Japan flights have average loads “routinely exceeding 90%”.
In other Japan news, ANA Holdings, parent of All Nippon Airways (ANA), plans to use Euglena Co. algae-derived fuel to power its jets. Using technology from Chevron Corp., Euglena will spend approximately 3 billion yen ($24 million) on a demonstration plant in Yokohama, to be completed in 2018, with the goal of producing about 125 kilolitres (33,000 gallons) of the fuel a year. Commercial production of the biofuel is scheduled to start by 2020.
"We'll use the fuel from the demonstration plant on real flights, mixing it with standard oil-based fuel," said Kiyoshi Tonomoto, an executive vice president at ANA. Tapping the plant's entire output, a 90-10 mix of standard and algae-based fuel could be used for one round trip a week between Haneda and Osaka, he said.
Separately, flag carrier Japan Airlines (JAL) has resumed its Narita-Dallas/Fort Worth route after 14 years. The service will initially run four times a week and be upgraded to daily from March 22 using a B787-8 configured in 161 seats. JAL’s Oneworld partner, American Airlines will continue to operate Narita-DFW twice daily with B777-200ERs.
DFW has won numerous routes to the Asia-Pacific in the last four years. They are AA to Incheon (May 2013), Shanghai and Hong Kong (June 2014) and Beijing (May 2015) as well as Qantas Airways to Sydney (September 2014), Emirates Airline to Dubai (February 2012), Qatar Airways to Doha (July 2014) and Etihad Airways to Abu Dhabi (December 2014).
