ANA leverages Asia network by moving flights to Tokyo Narita

ANA is in the process of moving several of its North American flights to Tokyo’s Narita International Airport to offer better connections across its Asian network. The move reverses an almost decade-long trend of shifting flights to the city’s close-in Haneda Airport. Like most of its peers in the region, ANA’s international network is operating at a fraction of its pre-pandemic capacity. North America flights remain relatively strong, but business traffic remains down significantly, while visiting friends and relatives and traffic has begun to rebound. Moving North America flights from Haneda — a popular airport with business travelers going to Tokyo — capitalizes on these trends and leverages as much of ANA’s international network as feasible, the carrier said in its financial results for the nine months ending in December on Tuesday. The move, however, reverses the long-term trend toward more Haneda flights, both by Japanese and US carriers. In the 2010s, Delta spearheaded a long-fought battle between the Japanese and US governments for more access to Haneda and, following the receipt of five additional slot pairs at the airport in 2019, dismantled the hub at Narita that it had inherited from Northwest. ANA’s move is the latest salvo in what is the slowest-moving game of ping pong in the airline industry. Narita opened with great fanfare in the 1970s to alleviate congestion at Haneda, which then served as domestic-only airport until the early 2000s when limited international flights resumed within Asia. And when the Japanese government opened a few slots for long-haul international flights in 2010, US carriers pounced. And now the cycle, at least temporarily while business travel remains down, reverses.<br/>