U.S. airlines aren’t able to just decide to fly to Tokyo Haneda airport. Based on an agreement with Japan, the Department of Transportation was able to assign 12 day time slot pairs to U.S. carriers, starting summer 2020. That’s up from just 5 slots pairs previously.

Before the pandemic American flew to Tokyo Haneda from LAX, Delta from LAX and Minneapolis, United from San Francisco and Hawaiian from Honolulu. Airlines applied to DOT, arguing for specific routes which would have the most consumer benefit. The decision criteria is supposed to be about what is best for passengers, not best for airlines.

These airlines are now allowed to serve Tokyo Haneda airport from:

• American Airlines: Dallas-Fort Worth; Los Angeles
  
• Delta Air Lines: Seattle; Detroit; Atlanta; Portland; Honolulu; Los Angeles; Minneapolis
  
• Hawaiian Airlines: Honolulu
  
• United Airlines: Newark; Chicago O’Hare; Washington-Dulles; Los Angeles; San Francisco

These awards to Delta, allowing them to become the largest U.S. carrier at Haneda with almost everything they asked for, didn’t increase service between the U.S. and Tokyo. Instead it allowed them to drop their historic Tokyo Narita hub which they acquired from Northwest Airlines. They prefer Haneda for non-stop Tokyo service (since it’s far more convenient to Tokyo) and to use their joint venture with Korean to push connecting traffic through Seoul.

DOT’s rule on these slots was that, once service commenced, none could go dormant for more than 90 days or the route authority could be taken back and awarded to another airline.

With Japan late to re-open, and traditional managed business travel still depressed, U.S. – Japan flying hasn’t recovered nearly as much as domestic travel or flying between the U.S. and Europe.

Delta wants its Haneda slots to be more flexible. It applied to the DOT to allow it "gateway flexibility" rather than being tied to the 2019 route plans. And it shared some sobering stats on just how depressed the demand is. ATL is best at 64% of 2019 levels.#AvGeek pic.twitter.com/UeWHyUFMD0

— Seth Miller (@WandrMe) May 1, 2023

Delta is asking to be allowed to keep all of its Tokyo Haneda flights while using two of them from wherever they wish “as part of a three-year pilot program” that would be available to other carriers as well.

• It may be the case that what’s best for consumers now has changed compared to when the DOT made its assignments in 2019.

• However DOT assigned routes, which were entrusted to specific airlines based on plans about how they’d serve those routes (for instance, what connections would be possible). They didn’t grant property rights in slots to airlines, and even said significant deviation from service plans would mean reconsidering what to do with the slots.

Delta dropped its Tokyo Narita hub, and was granted the largest presence at Haneda to serve specific routes because that service was deemed in the best interests of consumers. Now they want to treat those route authorities as a property right to do with as they wish. That ought to be a non-starter (can’t blame cronyist Delta for trying).

While I haven’t yet seen it published in the docket, reportedly American Airlines filed a response in support of the idea presumably because they’d like to move their Los Angeles – Tokyo Haneda flight.

As a current U.S.-Haneda slot holder, American supports the requested relief. Enabling flexible, market-based decision-making for U.S.-Haneda service is warranted in the current demand environment. Gateway flexibility for up to two current slot pairs would create public benefits by allowing all participating carriers to adapt their networks to the evolving conditions.

In a world where carriers were free to serve the airport from wherever they wished without limitation, then of course they should be able to choose where they serve it from. But since each airline is capped at the number of flights, to and from specific cities, that were proposed to DOT and determined based on a consumer benefit standard and not an airline profit standard airlines should operate what they committed to or return the slots to be re-allocated.

Hawaiian serves Tokyo with primarily leisure service that hasn’t recovered. They might not want more Tokyo service. But American Airlines – which only got half of what it asked for from DOT four years ago – has a joint venture with Japan Airlines and should certainly ask for more service (but American has become a largely domestic airline, skittish in its network planning). They’d be able to connect passengers beyond Haneda with their Japan Airlines joint venture. They might not get approval for their 2019-proposed second DFW flight or Las Vegas flight, but perhaps New York JFK or Miami would work.