News
Incidents at All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines; AirAsia Japan plans July launch
February 1st 2016
In Japan, it has been a week marred by incidents at Japan’s two largest carriers, All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Japan Airlines (JAL). Read More »
On Monday, pilots flying an ANA B787-8 from the Kuala Lumpur to Narita, with 203 passengers and 11 crew on board, received a right-hand engine (Rolls-Royce Trent 1000) EGT (exhaust gas temperature) over temperature indication. They stopped the climb, shut down the engine and returned for a safe landing at Kuala Lumpur 65 minutes after departure. ANA, Boeing, Rolls-Royce and the Japan Transport Safety Board are investigating the incident.
On March 3, ANA will celebrate 30 years of international flying since its inaugural Tokyo-Guam service in 1986. Since then, ANA has expanded its international route network to 59 routes spanning 39 cities. In its fiscal 2015 year, ANA had exceeded 100 million international passengers carried and launched four international routes. So far this year, it has opened Wuhan and Phnom Penh. In December, ANA CEO, Osamu Shinobe, told Orient Aviation the carrier was evaluating adding Denver to its network.
At ANA rival, JAL, 159 passengers and crew used escape slides to evacuate a smoke-filled B737-800, which was about to take off on a routine flight from Sapporo to Fukuoka on Tuesday.
A JAL spokesman said the CFM56-powered B737 was heading to the runway when it was ordered back to the terminal amid a heavy snowfall. It was then that the pilot reported engine trouble and smoke in the cabin, prompting the emergency evacuation. “A strange odour and smoke were detected inside the cabin,” the JAL spokesman said. Passengers reported that there was a smell of burning rubber at first, followed by smoke from the right-hand engine and then smoke in the cabin. Japanese media suggested the right-hand engine may have scraped a large snow pile while taxiing. The incident is being investigated.
In other Japan updates, AirAsia Japan chairman, Takashi Ide, said the Nagoya-based budget start-up will delay its launch from April/May to July/August. According to internal sources, the delay is caused by a number of factors, including a last-minute change in management that saw Ide replacing former chairman, Yoshinori Odagiri, among other senior executive changes.
Initially, the AirAsia Group joint venture will focus on Japan's domestic market using two A320s to connect its Chubu base twice daily with Sapporo, Sendai, and Taipei. In 2017, four more A320s will arrive, allowing the network to expand to Beijing, Tianjin, Guam, Hong Kong, Macau, Incheon, Pudong, and Wuxi, according to Ide. First profits are forecast for fiscal year 2017.
By 2018, AirAsia Japan plans to receive three more A320s, bringing the aircraft type to nine in the fleet, plus two A330s and then three more A320s and four extra A330s in 2019. The LCC will use the first two wide bodies to launch a Nagoya-Singapore route, followed by services from Chubu and Narita to Honolulu and Seattle or San Francisco.
