Originally Posted by
FireEmblemPride
Curious when JL’s flight will return to HND. Perhaps it’ll land before 6am to differentiate it from QR’s arrival, which is right before midnight.
I think this move makes sense. Clearly NH saw some strategic value in a future ME presence when it chose Turkey for a HND slot back in 2019. This looks like a practical way for JL to eventually compete with that.
On the Japanese side, there’s currently an unused evening slot for DXB as well. JL also codeshares with EK so it would be interesting to see if NH (who codeshares with EY) would be willing to try DXB.
NH does not see more strategic value in the Istanbul slot than it is not scheduled for a start yet. TK got a slot in Haneda, and a Japanese carrier had to get one as well. And JAL would certainly not be interested as they'd struggle to get connecting flight agreements. I think the "someone has to get it" point of view was probably bigger than some strategic plan on the side of NH.
So along with Milan and Stockholm, Istanbul is just on hold with no clear target for actually starting operations.