Tag Archives for tokyo haneda.
American Express will open a Centurion lounge at Tokyo Haneda airport. It will be on the fourth floor of terminal 3, and is slated to open next year. The lounge is be approximately 7,350 square feet with seating for 122 passengers.
American Airlines Announces New Tokyo Haneda Flight, Throws Down At United ‘Newark Is Not New York’
They’re now claiming to be the only U.S. airline flying New York to Tokyo. Which is only possible because United’s hub at Newark is not New York.
American Airlines is preparing to fly from New York JFK to Tokyo Haneda airport, opening up transfers to New York for flight attendants who speak Japanese.
This suggests they’re confident in winning the Tokyo Haneda slot given up by Delta (which no longer wanted to fly from Portland) – that the Department of Transportation will award it to them rather than to United which has proposed using the slot to fly from Houston.
United Airlines has attacked the American Airlines plan, saying that the DOT should look at connections served rather than the local market to determine consumer benefit. Now that the federal government has broken up its JetBlue partnership, American’s ability to serve connections in the New York market is far more limited. The Department of Justice handed a huge win to United and to Delta in New York by preventing American-JetBlue from becoming a large competitor with their New York duopoly.
According to United, DOT set a precedent in preferring connecting markets to Tokyo Haneda over non-stop ones in their 2019 proceeding originally awarding the routes since that was a justification for denying Las Vegas a Haneda flight.
In the battle for limited takeoff and landing slots at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, U.S. airlines like Delta, American, and United vied for positions, with Delta receiving the most slots despite not having a Japanese airline partner. The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) now faces decisions on slot reallocations, as Delta relinquishes its Portland-Tokyo route and other airlines propose routes that overlap with their joint venture partners, raising questions about competition and consumer benefit.
I thought Delta would have a good chance keeping the slot if it proposed a New York JFK flight (a new competitor on the route in an important market, and ironically one with much better connectivity now that the Department of Justice forced American and JetBlue to break up their partnership). I also thought that the best shot of winning would be new service from a market that currently lacks a non-stop to Tokyo, such as Miami (or Orlando).
However Delta is telling its employees that the slot will go to American or to United.
Delta lays out how United’s response is self-serving. And of course it is! Just like Delta’s request is self-serving. The question isn’t the motives of each airline, it’s how should DOT handle it when an airline no longer wants to serve the route that was awarded to them?
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.
A week ago American’s Vice President of Planning, Vasu Raja, told employees it would be “in the next several weeks” that the airline would announce their new Tokyo Haneda flights. The holdup was coordinating with joint venture partner Japan Airlines so that the two carriers could together so that in Los Angeles they could offer “a really separated pattern where every 2 or 3 hours there’s an American flight or a JAL flight much like what we have at JFK – Heathrow today.”
The airline did not wait for this and is instead out with details of their two new flights to Tokyo Haneda
Based on comments by American Airlines top executives at an employee meeting last week, the airline is working on a Tokyo Haneda shuttle schedule at LAX. They’re preparing to send Boeing 787s into the Pacific. And they’re looking forward to new Boeing 787 aircraft deliveries that they intend to fly 7000 miles – to places like India and Africa.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
