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All Nippon Airways approaches route reductions with forensic precision as boom expected from Tokyo Olympics evaporates
March 27th 2020
All Nippon Airways [ANA] has unveiled a new raft of flight changes across its domestic and international networks due to the coronavirus pandemic. Read More »
The airline said on March 26 it would cut another 391 international flights serving 21 routes.
The latest schedule changes were set addition service reductions to China, Hong Kong, Thailand, South Korea and Vietnam and suspensions of the airline's North American services.
After taking the latest changes into account, ANA said the number of affected international journeys from March 29 to April 24 totalled 3,638 flights serving 68 different routes.
Domestic ANA frequencies will be reduced, the airline said, and four routes would be suspended in April: a total of 3,788 flights to 58 destinations. The latest route reductions brought the total number of affected flights to 6,561 serving 64 different routes, the airline said.
Four of the recently suspended routes are Komatsu-Sapporo, Okayama-Sapporo, Nagoya-Memanbetsu and Nagoya-Asahikawa, ANA said.
Japan Airlines (JAL) also announced this week it would pare capacity with the cancellation of 2,508 domestic flights from March 29 to April 19.
The cutbacks were in addition to previously announced reductions of 1,268 flights made on March 19.
JAL said it planned to operate 29% of its scheduled international flights between March 29 and April 30.
"The company sincerely apologises for any inconvenience, but would like to ask for customer understanding during this unprecedented time," JAL said in a statement on March 25.
The Japanese government has banned foreigners with Chinese passports issued by Hubei Province – where the COVID-19 outbreak originated – and those from China’s Zhejiang province from entering Japan.
It also has closed its borders to foreigners who have visited parts of China, Iceland, Iran, Italy, San Marino, Spain, South Korea and Switzerland in the previous 14 days and non-Japanese passport holders on board cruise ship, MS Westerdam, if they disembarked at Sihanoukville city, Cambodia.
Some passengers were also put into 14-day quarantine once entering Japan.
