Cathay Pacific Asia Miles - Competitor NH eyes service from HKG to Tokyo's HANEDA

Just thought this would be of great interest to CX fliers:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=775706&referrerid=1228

HND (Haneda) is much closer to downtown Tokyo than Narita.

I wonder if CX is also considering a similar service. International services to/from HND are usually reciprocated by carriers of the destination countries.

Just thought this would be of great interest to CX fliers:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=775706&referrerid=1228

HND (Haneda) is much closer to downtown Tokyo than Narita.

I wonder if CX is also considering a similar service. International services to/from HND are usually reciprocated by carriers of the destination countries.

As the flight time is around 4,5 hours this route would hopefully be operated by widebody aircraft. But I would expect fierce resistance from both Chiba-ken officials and NRT executives. Haneda is expanding on the most profitable Asian routes...

As the flight time is around 4,5 hours this route would hopefully be operated by widebody aircraft. But I would expect fierce resistance from both Chiba-ken officials and NRT executives. Haneda is expanding on the most profitable Asian routes...

There will be resistance for sure, but hopefully it will fade in the long run. Haneda is building its fourth runway opening 2010, and it is pretty much assumed that is for an increase in intl traffic. This is a huge point for Haneda and NRT was none too pleased when it got approved. It's hard to imagine that, while possibly North American and European flights will still go to NRT, that more regional Asian flights won't go to Haneda when the runway opens, and hopefully a larger trickle gets moving before then. Getting to NRT is just such a massive pain.

When I think about it (I'm from North America), it really is unfair IMO to all the regional Asian fliers to have to fly around on these relatively short flights and get stuck in customs each time. That's the nature of having many countries so close together (unlike, say North America) but when you add the customs hassle (which HKG and SIN have done a great job streamlining) it really just gets the business trip off to the wrong start when you then miss the Narita Express by 5 minutes, and know you can't be downtown for then nearly 1.5 hours. Even worse, it's not like you can buy your way out of the mess by hiring a car to meet you or anything because chances are traffic can make the journey 2 hours. My company isn't going to sponsor a helicopter for me so I'm doomed to the ground in Tokyo. So in a nutshell...probably repeating what everyone else here feels, I'm all for the Haneda "charters" and cross my fingers that CX eventually gets the reciprocal

Well, currently there are a few flights between Seoul (Kimpo) airport to HND, which is a pretty short flight. It's a great time saver between Tokyo and Seoul, as Kimpo is a lot closer to central Seoul compared with ICN.

I'd love to see more regional flights to HND - agree, NRT is such a pain to get to/from central Tokyo. NRT also has capacity limits due to limited runway handling, so that might be a future trend for regional flights. Up until 2002, CI used to operate its Tokyo flights out of HND because of past political pressure from the PRC not wanting to operate flights from the same airport as Taiwanese carriers back in the 1970s. CI consistently had high load factors from HND because of that.

Similarly, Milan has the same airport issue - a close-in airport that is popular with locals for regional flights (Linate) vs. a bigger but more distant airport for intercontinental flights (Malpensa 2000) and a policy to steer more flights to the bigger one.