Japan - The Pros and Cons of Legacy Carriers (JAL/ANA) vs Skymark/Skynetasia for domestics

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone could enlighten me as to the pro's and cons between Skymark and JAL/ANA. I've had experience of both and I'm not sure at least in whY what is worth the extra cash to fly on legacy carriers.

Both carriers have reasonably modern planes and so forth and the efficency of service seemed relatively the same. The only noticeable differences I could see at least in Y was that JAL made more of an effort with English safety announcements over Skymark and I got a free drink in JAL....

I'm not quite sure what is worth the standard rack rate 28,000 yen for a domestic sector on JAL.

However what i did find curious is that I know and have seen evidence that if you look in the right places and book at the right time when the moon is in the 3rd quarter that you can get heavily discounted sectors on legacy carriers and I was wondering if anyone would mind divulging the secret to me? For example one of my Japanese sensei's said she managed to get flights on JAL from NGS up to CTS and hotel for 44,000 yen and I'd paid 46,000 yen just for the flights alone. So whats the secret? How did she get such a good deal??

The reason I'm asking is I'm planning a trip up to Tokyo in April and was wondering if it's worth pursuing a flight on JAL with combined hotel stay over and above the Skymark or Skynet Asia route + a stay at my favourite 5,000 yen ryokan near Kamata....

Regards


-mrploddy

You can usually get a decent price on JAL/ANA if you book in advance, but the tour opeators often have even better deals including airfare and hotels.

I used: http://www.bigs.jp/
for a trip to Kagoshima with Hamburgler and I think we booked about 2 weeks in advance and each paid Y20,000 for roundtrip airfare (HND-KOJ) and one night hotel. The hotel was very nice--much nicer than either of us expected--but I'm pretty sure we had the worst room in it. Fine for a night though.

Alex

Yea, you'll absolutely want to check out the tour companies. They're the only way to travel domestically if you need a hotel as well.

For example, my Hokkaido weekend included roundtrip HND-CTS on JL (not my choice, but J-class for 1000 JPY was great), bus transfers to and from Kiroro, a night up in Kiroro and a nice in Sapporo for 32,200 JPY all-in (included breakfast one morning as well). Last year I know I did my whole weekend in CTS via Bigs for what AlexS paid for his airfare.

Besides Bigs (who I really like, they work well and as *G I like flying NH even though I don't get mileage -- the lounge and baggage handling is great) there's also JTB, J-Trip (who did the ski trip above), Rakuten Travel, etc. Yahoo! Travel has a good aggregation of deals from all the different vendors.

ANA has brought things in a bit with the Takuwari fares (which were even available during snow festival on certain days for 13k one way HND-CTS) but the tours are still a much better deal for anyone who needs a hotel at their destination.

The thing with domestic flights in Japan is that you have to really study the options and plan in advance to get the best deals. Here's a list of all possible discounts at ANA alone:

http://www.ana.co.jp/eng/dms/fare/index.html

Chowari is probably the most useful if you want rock-bottom fares:

http://www.ana.co.jp/eng/dms/fare/bargen/main_hd.html

Available only at certain times, but the next reservation period starts on the 15th. Dial in fast when it does -- for popular routes, you won't be the only one!

I've flown NH for years due to * G status etc, and I almost always find there service flawlwss. When the fares are super cheap(like in 10/2006 for 12000 Yen return FUK/HND) I will gladly fly on SKY!