News
Japan approves Iberia to join Japan-Europe alliance
August 19th 2016
Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) has granted an extension of the anti-trust immunity to include Iberia in the joint business between Japan Airlines (JAL), British Airways and Finnair, allowing the four airlines to cooperate commercially on flights between Europe and Japan. Read More »
Iberia is expected to join the revenue-sharing partnership from October 18, the same date the Spanish carrier will launch a thrice-weekly Narita-Madrid A330 service. Its addition to the joint business will provide customers with a larger network, more flights, better connections and more frequent flyer benefits.
The revenue-sharing agreement will strengthen the oneworld alliance and enable it to compete more effectively around the world with other global alliances.
"We would like to thank the regulators for approving our ATI application. This move will allow us to further strengthen our partnership with oneworld partner airlines, and will provide our customers with further benefits for travels between Japan and Europe," said JAL president, Yoshiharu Ueki.
BA and JAL started the partnership in 2012 and Finnair joined in 2014.
BA operates to Haneda and Narita daily, JAL flies daily from Haneda and Narita to Paris, daily from Haneda to Heathrow and daily from Narita, to Frankfurt and Helsinki, respectively.
JAL rival, All Nippon Airways (ANA), has a revenue sharing alliance with Lufthansa for services to Europe and another with United Airlines for trans-Pacific services.
In other Japan updates, Delta Air Lines senior vice-president for the Asia-Pacific, Vinay Dube, has said the SkyTeam carrier will cancel its flights from Narita to JFK, Bangkok and Osaka from October, after having been preliminarily allotted two of the new daytime departure slots at Haneda for U.S. carriers.
"Delta remains committed to growing and strengthening our Asia presence over the long term, and we are optimistic that the DOT will issue a final award for Delta to operate Los Angeles and Minneapolis/St. Paul service to Haneda," Dube has said. "In the meantime, cancelled markets will be served by at least one of Delta’s codeshare partners."
Japanese authorities are studying the creation of a new Haneda approach path over central Tokyo which previously has not been allowed. The approach would generally be used when winds are coming from the south. Current approaches are generally over Tokyo Bay. The new approach could add up to 39,000 additional aircraft movements a year, the government said.
