ZIPAIR is a Japanese low cost carrier owned by Japan Airlines. It launched during the pandemic with a hub at Tokyo Narita airport and flights to Singapore, Seoul, Bangkok, Honolulu and Los Angeles. San Jose flights are planned at the end of the year. They fly Boeing 787-8 aircraft leased from Japan Airlines with 8 business class and 272 coach seats.
While right now the cheapest business class roundtrip fares are over $4000 between San Francisco and Tokyo on other carriers, Carissa Rawson reports that ZIPAIR is selling business class for just $1668. And there are great deals from Los Angeles as well.
- San Francisco – Tokyo Narita $1668 roundtrip
- Los Angeles – Tokyo Narita $1823 roundtrip
You can purchase on the ZipAir.net website, and flight searches are available from Google Flights as well. They generally do not show up at online travel agency websites.
ZipAir calls their business product “ZIP Full-Flat” and you can think of it like the Spirit Airlines Big Front Seat, which is to say that you are buying a fully flat seat at the price and not extras. You don’t even get a seat assignment or included checked bags. You even pay extra for a meal!
- Seat assignments are $18
- A checked bag starts at $50
- 7kg carry on bag is free, an extra 5kg is $42
And I think I want to fly them just for the inflight merchandise you can pre-purchase.
Amenity kits are for purchase, and so is lounge access in Tokyo ($11.35 for the Narita TraveLounge including one complimentary alcohol beverage or dessert).
I’m excited to return to Japan in a matter of weeks myself. While in general I find that “basic business” just doesn’t work but that’s because airlines charge too much for the extras – $11 lounge access and sub-$20 seat assignments are reasonable enough to work, but note that the airfares themselves are so much cheaper that the fees certainly don’t make up the difference.
This is exactly the kind of product I’d consider as a leisure traveler, a reasonably-priced bed and you’re not overpaying for the rest of the extras.
FYI – San Jose flights are already happening.
>While right now the cheapest business class roundtrip fares are over $4000 between San Francisco and Tokyo, Carissa Rawson reports that ZIPAIR is selling business class for just $1668
This sentence doesn’t really make sense, Gary. 🙂
I have a ticket for a Zipair flight from NRT-SJC scheduled for 07/29/2023. Yes, I purchased the full flat seat.
I flew Zipair from Tokyo to Singapore last month. It was a daytime flight so I did not pay the 2x fare for the lie-flat seat. I don’t think you can call it a business class seat- along with the restrictions you list above, there’s also no priority check-in, no priority boarding, no differentiated class of service- just the bigger seat. Zipair does not call it a business class seat, either- it’s just a different-sized seat in economy. So the article you linked to really mischaracterized the offering, and your headline perpetuates the error…
Oh- also forgot to mention, but the website is a pain to work with- it was very laggy, timed out while loading the payment page, crashed once and also let me get to the end once and told me my fare was no longer available. All in all, took me over an hour to book a simple one way flight.