Originally Posted by
Fanjet
How much business class demand is there on HNL-HND? That's where the higher yields come from. There will still be a lot more flights between HNL and NRT than HND. How much more revenue does a HNL-HND flight bring in than a HNL-NRT one?
Actually, surprisingly enough once again, but it's always full. I've been on both NRT-HNL and HND-HNL a few times, and a) JL *never* releases award space on them (that I've seen) and b) in all cases, the flight was C0 Y0, or at best, one or two seats were available - and I went during various seasons. I'm not saying the flight is *always* packed to the gills (checking EF, there's a full array of C9 to C0 over the next week), but more often than not, the planes appear to be quite full. Paritcularly with the events in Europe, which had a significant negative impact on Japan->European tourist traffic, I'm quite certain loads on HNL are at their highest point now.
For Japanese domestic travellers, HND is a much better airport than NRT. NH, HA and JL each have a single flight out of it, so I suspect JL figures that having two flights would provide a competitive advantage over the other two. For international connections, it's true that NRT is a better option, but I would think that them flying NRT-HNL is more due to a lack of slots at HND than strategic planning focussed on capturing international connecting traffic via NRT to carry passengers to HNL, rather than HND-originating traffic (since Japan-departing passengers would tend to be more likely to prefer the HND flights due to distance).