Airlines
ANA takes delivery of 50th B787, tweaks winter schedule
August 26th 2016
Japan’s All Nippon Airways (ANA), Boeing's first and largest customer for the B787 Dreamliner, said last Wednesday it was reaping huge savings from operating the aircraft after overcoming early technical and operational issues. Read More » "Compared with the B767, ANA saves $98 million a year to operate [the B787]," said Hideki Kunugi, ANA's senior vice-president for the Americas. Kunugi said ANA’s B787 flights to Seattle and San Jose would be unprofitable if operated by the B767.
On Wednesday, ANA took delivery of its 50th Dreamliner, a -9 variant. Dreamliners have flown 125,000 flights and carried 20 million passengers for ANA, said Kunugi. The Star Alliance member has another 30 -9s in its books, as well as three of the stretched -10s.
ANA president and chief executive, Osamu Shinobe, has told Orient Aviation the carrier was “more than satisfied” with the performance of its Dreamliner fleet. He said the global dispatch reliability of all aircraft across all carriers averaged 99.2%. ANA has achieved a 99.7% reliability factor on its B777-300ERs and a 99.6% on its B787 fleet.
The carrier will launch a Narita-Mexico City service in February, with a B787 powered by Rolls-Royce’s freshly-certified Trent 1000 TEN (Thrust, Efficiency and New Technology). Shinobe said the airline had been waiting for a higher-thrust B787 engine capable of tackling Mexico City’s high-altitude conditions without payload restrictions.
ANA also has announced a revised winter schedule, from October 30. The airline will operate daily flights to Chicago and New York’s JFK from both Haneda Airport and Narita Airport, to replace double daily flights from Narita. It also will inaugurate a daily Haneda-Kuala Lumpur service, increase frequency between Haneda and Hong Kong from nine to ten flights a week and convert Narita-Ho Chi Minh to double daily. Narita-Chengdu will be cut from seven to four days a week.
ANA will replace the B767 with the B787 on the majority of its Haneda/Narita-Honolulu services, which means passengers will have full-flat premium seating during the eight-hour journey. It has three A380s on order that will be flying to Hawaii from 2018.
