Originally Posted by
mikekelley
I can't wrap my head around the HND arrival bickering. 2300 is perfect. You get right to sleep and wake up next day ready to go, and are able to get a full day in before leaving LAX. Not bad at all.
Not really. By landing at 23:00 you're pretty much jet lagged to get enough sleep (you already sleep in the plane) and by the time you clear immigration and customs, collect your luggage, get a cab (or take the Airport Limousine bus or Tokyo Monorail to JR) it could be well past midnight before you reach your hotel and have less than few hours of sleep (and have trouble sleeping considering if you slept on the plane) before morning.
With a 05:00 arrival like NH, it works out beautifully because you already get sleep on the plane and by the time you wake up, it's morning in Japan and can get right at working or leisure travel the day you arrive.
Trust me, I've done my share of late night arrivals into NRT from JFK, ICN, and TPE and it isn't great as you imagine and I doubt it's any better with late night arrivals into HND.
Originally Posted by
ashill
But an ANA plane arriving at HND at 0500 doesn't have to sit on the ground for 17 hours, whereas an AA plane would. Obviously, that doesn't matter to a customer, who should by all means take the early morning arrival of it works better, but it does mean that the US airlines have a very good economic reason not to use that schedule.
One way to get around this is that AA can argue that DL isn't utilizing their grandfathered (from NW) fifth freedom rights in Japan. DL has made large cutbacks such as ending flights to ICN, PUS, soon HKG, SGN, BOM and others that NW used to fly when NRT was their hub. Such a case, if successful, can lead to:
1. AA purchases DL's fifth freedom rights in Japan, much like how UA purchased PA's rights
or
2. Liberalize fifth freedom rights in Japan to include AA so that AA can use that 17 hours to fly beyond HND to places like ICN/GMP, TPE/TSA, HKG, or SIN and strengthen the number of OW flights in East Asia to compete better with *A.