Peach Aviation to take over Vanilla Air’s routes in 2019

Japanese LCC Peach Aviation will prepare for its merger with sister carrier Vanilla Air by taking over Vanilla’s routes next year. Peach and Vanilla Air are both subsidiaries of All Nippon Airways (ANA) Holdings. In March 2018, the group confirmed its intention to merge the two LCCs under the Peach brand during the fiscal year beginning April 1, 2019. Most of the flights branded as Vanilla Air will be transferred to Peach during the next summer schedule season, which runs from March 31 to Oct. 26, 2019. However, in some cases there will be a gap between the end of the Vanilla flight and the start of the corresponding Peach flight, and a handful of the Vanilla routes will be dropped. Peach has also announced new routes. Ten of Vanilla’s 13 international and domestic routes will be resumed as Peach flights. The three flights dropped are from Tokyo Narita-Hakodate, Japan; Narita-Hong Kong; and Okinawa, Japan-Ishigaki, Japan. Flights will be increased on routes from Ishigaki to Narita and Osaka. Peach said it will launch two new routes in the summer season, and relaunch three others that it has previously suspended. The most significant new route is a daily flight between Sapporo, Japan and Seoul, beginning April 25. <br/>