FIn Review today:
Qantas access to Haneda to increase capacity to Japan
The number of flights between Australia and Japan will increase after Qantas Airways was granted a coveted peak-time slot at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, which is much closer to the city’s centre than Narita Airport.
Qantas’s only mainline flights to Japan at present are daily Boeing 747 flights from Sydney to Narita. From next August it will offer daily flights from Australia to both Haneda and Narita. It has not yet announced the city pairs nor whether they will be on 747s or smaller Airbus A330s, but either way the capacity between Australia and Japan will increase.
CAPA Centre for Aviation executive director Peter Harbison said it would make sense for Qantas to offer flights from Sydney to Haneda to attract premium business traffic and from Melbourne or Brisbane to Narita.
“Haneda is a premium airport because it is so close,” he said.
Haneda is a 15-minute ride to Tokyo’s central business district by monorail while it takes around 90 minutes by train from Narita.
Haneda had long only been available for domestic Japanese flights with Narita designated for international flights, but since 2010 both airports have be used for mixed traffic in part because Japanese carriers were losing connecting traffic from secondary cities to Korean airlines using Seoul as a hub.
Australian departures to Japan increased by 17 per cent in the last year, according to Tourism and Transport Forum data.
There are not many direct flights to Japan from Australia relative to those available to other Asian countries and Qantas and Jetstar are the dominant carriers. Qantas’s oneworld partner Japan Airlines offers daily Boeing 777 flights from Sydney to Narita, while Jetstar has flights from Melbourne to Narita, Gold Coast to Narita and Cairns to Narita and Osaka. Qantas also owns a one-third stake in Jetstar Japan alongside JAL.
Jetstar Japan offers flights from Narita to several destinations in Japan which are also available on codeshares with Qantas, JAL and American Airlines.
Many Australians fly indirectly to Japan using airlines like Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific and Korean Air and Qantas’s increased capacity to Japan may attract some of those travellers that would prefer direct flights.
“This is great news for customers travelling from Australia to Tokyo and popular destinations across Japan,” Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said.
“It’s also great news for Australian tourism, because it makes it easier for Japanese visitors to come to here.”
Japan is Australia’s sixth-largest inbound tourism market, with 330,000 visitors in the year to September.
TTF chief executive Margy Osmond said Japanese visitors spend almost one-third of their time in Australia outside the gateway cities, so the capacity would also benefit regional tourism destinations.
The addition of flights to Japan is one of many changes Qantas has made to its international schedule in recent months as it looks to use its aircraft for more hours a day. It is adding more capacity to North America and Chile, and from January it will introduce refurbished A330s with new business class seats.
Meanwhile, Air New Zealand is considering whether to add another destination in North America.
Sources said it could launch flights from Auckland to Chicago, Houston or Las Vegas using its new 787-9 aircraft within the next 12 months, allowing ¬Australians one-stop access with an easy ¬transit in Auckland rather than in Los Angeles or Dallas.
Air New Zealand already flies from Auckland to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Vancouver.